On An Island, In The Spirit, On A Sunday (Revelation 1:9-20) | Pastor Jake Sweetman

Welcome to our latest sermon, "On an Island in the Spirit on a Sunday," where we dive into the profound opening vision of the book of Revelation. Journey with us as we explore John's exile on Patmos and the transformative encounter that offers a clearer vision of Jesus. Through insightful storytelling, we uncover how seeing Jesus anew equips us to navigate modern-day Babylon without compromise. Reflect on the roles of consolation and correction in our faith journey, and discover how enduring trials can reveal the kingdom of God within us. This message is a call to embrace our royal identity through faithfulness amid tribulation, to resist the comforts of Babylon, and to stand firm in our divine calling. Join us as we unveil the deeper meanings behind the imagery in Revelation and explore the vibrant hope found in Christ's presence among His churches.

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Transcript

 Why don't you open your Bibles to the book of Revelation.

If you don't know where that is, that's the last book in your Bible.

Let's turn there together.

We're going to read quite a lengthy passage today.

There's absolutely no way that I'll finish today's message.

I made peace with that during the worship.

And I had to die to myself.

I said, Lord, I've put a lot of time into this, a lot of hours.

And the Lord said, I know, but I'm more important and I'm doing something right now.

I said, okay, God, you're the boss.

So we'll just get as far as we can, yeah?

Yeah.

 Revelation chapter 1, and we're beginning today in verse 9.

It says this, I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom.

 and patient endurance that are ours in Christ Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

On the Lord's day, I was in the spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said, write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

Remember, seven is the number of completion.

 in the scriptures and so john purposefully writes to seven because the seven represent the complete church the whole church this is just as much to us as it was to them however its relevance to us cannot bypass its relevance to them it cannot mean to you and i what it never could have meant to them

 Verse 12, I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me and when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.

 The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.

His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

In his right hand, he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth with a sharp, double-edged sword, his face was like the sun shining in all of its brilliance.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

 Then he placed his right hand on me and said, do not be afraid.

I am the first and the last.

I am the living one.

I was dead and now look, I am alive forever and ever and I hold the keys of death and Hades.

 Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.

The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this.

The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

The title of my message today is On an Island in the Spirit on a Sunday.

 When I was in high school, I was convinced that I desperately needed eyeglasses.

I kept on telling my parents that I need eyeglasses.

And my family is Australian, and I had a very typical Australian dad, and he would respond in a very typical Aussie dad way.

Every time I'd say, dad, I think I need glasses, he'd go, you'll be right, mate.

 By the time I got to 10th grade, I felt that I really couldn't see all that well, and eventually my mom took me to the optometrist, and sure enough, I needed glasses.

I got myself a very trendy pair of DKNYs, which I later learned stands for Donna Karen New York.

I had bought women's glasses in the 10th grade.

 But it didn't matter because suddenly I saw things clearly that I didn't even realize I was missing.

I would go to work at the Crocs kiosk.

This is before Crocs were cool.

I was wearing uncool Crocs and women's glasses at the mall of Georgia.

And I'd be looking at the signage around me and I'd be taking my glasses off and putting my glasses on.

My God, this is the way the world has always supposed to look like to me.

And it's never looked this way to me.

I was having a revelation.

 An unveiling of the way the world really is.

Revelation's first vision opens with John saying, I turned to see.

John was in exile on an island for his bold witness to Jesus, and no doubt he, like me, needed glasses.

He needed to see things properly in the midst of his circumstances, his loneliness, his concern for the churches in his absence, and those churches needed glasses too.

 John's purpose for writing down the revelation is to tell the church, you think you see reality, but you don't.

You need a clearer vision of Jesus because only in seeing him can you see yourselves and your circumstances rightly.

And the book of Revelation is that set of glasses.

It corrects our vision so that we can see things as they really are.

And the vision starts with Jesus.

 That's really significant, isn't it?

That the first thing we see in the apocalypse is not the dragon, not the beast, not a mark.

It's Jesus.

We don't see our circumstance.

We see the son because he's the one that we need to see if we're going to navigate our circumstances rightly.

What you see of Jesus determines how you stand in Babylon.

 And if your vision of him is unclear or misguided, you will be prone to compromise.

You will lose heart.

But if your vision of Jesus is true and clear, then you will endure, you will flourish.

And the inaugural vision of Revelation chapter 1 is where Jesus gives us the glasses we need so that we can see him and stand firm in our faith.

 This vision of Jesus evokes two activities, if you like, that are associated with Jesus.

And those activities are consolation.

Everybody say consolation.

And correction.

Say correction.

Jesus does both these things for his church because consolation and correction are what's needed for us to remain faithful.

 And so today as we look at John's vision of the Son of Man standing amongst the lampstands, we are asking God to correct our vision too, to help us see Jesus as he really is and ourselves as we really are.

John prepares us for the vision in verse 9.

He says, I, John, your brother and your companion in the suffering and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are ours in Jesus.

 John was exiled on an island called Patmos because of his testimony that Jesus alone is Lord.

Rome was a polytheistic society, which means that they worshiped many gods.

And to be honest, they didn't care much which gods you chose to worship so long as Caesar was among them.

 The emperor's cult wasn't just about religion.

It was a way of demanding ultimate loyalty to Rome itself to treat the state as godlike.

 Now, being loyal to your nation or being loyal to any other group to which you may belong isn't necessarily a problem by itself, but when that loyalty requires disloyalty or less loyalty to Jesus, such as worshiping Caesar or violating the ethics of the kingdom of God, then it very quickly becomes a problem.

This was a tension that the apostles had to help the early church navigate to honor the emperor without worshiping him.

 to submit to the authority of the state while recognizing that God is the highest authority, which means that if our submission to the state requires disobedience to God, then we cannot go along with that.

This was a major part of the tension that the church in John's day found themselves navigating and the pressure to defect away from Christ was increasing both from their neighbors and also from magistrates.

And this is a

 pressure that the Western church knows as well, just in a different form, a pressure we've had to reckon with in a unique way since the Enlightenment.

Because as our societies grow more secular, we get detached from the sacred.

 Our society has become disenchanted as we distance ourselves from the divine and that detachment does not leave a neutral space.

It creates a vacuum that human and spiritual powers are always eager to fill through the mediums of the political and the ideological.

 Sometimes that manifests as something like classic totalitarianism, power exercised from above through censorship, bans on religion, the weaponization of fear, as some of our brothers and sisters across the globe know.

In our context, though, it looks more like what some call soft totalitarianism.

Not iron fists and prisons, but endless amusement and distraction.

Instead of chains, there are mind-numbing comforts.

 Instead of silencing, there is subtle sedation.

It's less 1984 and more Brave New World, for those of you who have read Orwell or Huxley.

A culture willingly enslaved, not by force, but by appetite.

We bow to comfort and entertainment in exchange for meaning.

We serve our psychological selves in exchange for pursuing the truth that transcends us.

And when that truth dares confront our desires and feelings, we call it oppression.

 Revelation names that gravitational pull towards self-orientation.

Revelation calls it Babylon.

The system that purchases our worship with comfort and utopian deceptions and to claim the exclusivity of Christ's lordship in that setting upsets the equilibrium because if Christ is lord, then that means that people's feelings and desires which they have grown so accustomed to satisfying are not.

 And that can be a declaration of war, even in a liberal democracy like our own that is increasingly untethering itself from transcendence in pursuit of unencumbered individual liberty.

It can be a declaration of war, but it can also be, as I think we are seeing in our generation, a beacon of hope and light.

 As a whole generation who have eaten the fruit of secularism and gagged on its aftertaste are hungry and into that disillusionment the confession that Christ is Lord shines with a brilliance that the world's empty ideologies and promises cannot manufacture.

You see, for the first century church to worship Jesus was to make a political statement.

I don't care what you say.

There is no separation of faith and politics.

 Your faith ought to inform the way that you interact with the world around you.

I love what one scholar gave as a definition for the political.

Politics is the promotion of the truth for the sake of society.

 We better hope to God that the truth of God is making its way into our society if we have any hope of standing one more day as a nation.

For the first century church to worship Jesus was to make a political statement about whom you served and where your allegiance lay.

And John's refusal to compromise the purity of his worship, his bold witness to Christ's exclusive lordship over every ruler and power was read as political rebellion.

John's insistence on saying Jesus is Lord

 which relativized and minimized the lordship of Caesar, that brought him suffering and exile on Patmos.

Yet notice how John frames his circumstance.

Not with complaint.

But I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Christ Jesus.

 That phrase captures the paradox of the Christian life.

Geographically, John is on Patmos.

Spiritually, he is in Christ.

Partnering, the word is koinonia, having fellowship with the rest of the body in suffering kingdom and patient endurance.

All three of those words are significant in that threefold phrase.

Suffering, or as it may be translated in your Bible, tribulation is not just an end times event.

And it's certainly not something from which we get raptured.

 Thousands were reminded of that just this past week when a frenzy spread online predicting the rapture was going to happen this past Wednesday.

A doctrine, by the way, which Revelation never teaches.

 Revelation does not promise that one lucky generation of Christians will escape tribulation.

It promises that every generation of Christian will endure tribulation with patient faithfulness.

You see, tribulation defines the entirety of the church age from the cross of Christ onward.

The church has faced tribulation and resisted the powers of the dragon, the beast, and Babylon.

That's why John, even 2,000 years ago, can say, yeah, I'm sharing in that tribulation with you.

 And that's why patient endurance, if I'm messing with your theology, by the way, don't worry, I'll say more about the rapture in a later week.

Keep coming back.

That's why patient endurance that John mentions on the other side of this threefold phrase is also essential because patient endurance is what your faithful witness to Christ looks like when it begins to cost you something.

The phrase patient endurance appears seven times in Revelation.

 symbolizing a call to complete patience, to lasting endurance.

The word literally in Greek means to remain under.

And the call is that you would remain faithful to Jesus under pressure, under hardship, in tribulation.

And as you do that, the outcome won't always be that the suffering goes away quickly, as if it were just some empty threat only coming to test you.

 No, no, no.

Sometimes the outcome will be that the suffering comes crashing upon you over your head like it did for John in his exile.

And yet even in that, you remain faithful.

That is the lock and the key of tribulation and patient endurance.

When those things come together in your life, it unlocks something for you.

It grants you access to a treasure.

Because in the middle of that threefold phrase is a word you may not expect.

It's kingdom.

 It's so perfectly placed that the kingdom is framed by suffering and endurance.

Which means that somewhere amid the experience of your suffering and your patience is the experience of your royal identity waiting to be discovered.

And at first that seems out of place to us.

How can you be reigning and suffering at the same time?

 And yet John insists, along with the rest of the New Testament, that the two belong together.

Because in God's kingdom, suffering is an opposite of reigning.

It's the perfect opportunity to reign.

You say, how does that work?

The best way to understand it is to think about it in connection to the overall biblical picture of kingship.

Consider Adam and Eve as the archetypal example.

They were created to be co-regents.

Them two together co-ruling with God over the earth.

Sharing in his reign.

 But their role was not to rule independently from God.

Their role was to keep pointing creation back to God as the true king, as the king of kings.

The kings of Israel were meant to do exactly the same.

They weren't the ultimate authority.

They were supposed to lead God's people in trusting and obeying God.

In fact, go through Deuteronomy chapter 17 and read the traits of the ideal king of Israel.

They sound a lot more like a pastor than a president.

 Not with endless wealth and endless armies at their disposal, but someone who is measured by his love for God and his dependence upon the Lord.

And what that means is that any Christian can live out that calling of what it means to be a king in God's kingdom.

Because it's about revealing God's character as the king of kings.

So then we should pause and ask the question, okay, what is God's character?

 And God himself tells us the answer to that question in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7.

God says, here's what I'm like.

I'm compassionate and gracious.

I'm slow to anger.

I'm abounding in love and faithfulness.

I'm forgiving, yet I'm just.

That's what God says he's like.

That's what we're meant to reflect.

So where might the qualities of compassion and grace, patience and forgiveness, abundant love and faithfulness

 Where might those qualities be most graphically and powerfully demonstrated?

In your hardship.

In your circumstances that require you to endure.

 Maybe that's enduring through mistreatment for the sake of your faith in Christ.

Maybe it's walking through a difficult season in your marriage, in your church community, in your workplace.

But if reigning in God's kingdom means revealing what God, the true king, is like, then there is no better way to reveal him than in the moments where you have to pick up your cross.

 And so John shows us with this phrase that the church reigns with Christ, not by avoiding the cost of discipleship, but by embracing it.

Because Jesus reigned from a cross and revealed to us the Father.

Therefore, we carry our crosses.

And as we endure, we reveal the heart of God to the world around us.

The point is this.

In spite of your circumstances, you can reign.

You don't need money to reign.

 You don't need followers on Instagram to reign.

You don't need fame to reign.

You don't need power to reign.

You need faithfulness.

In fact, sometimes those other things can actually undermine your participation in the reign of God if they are eroding Christ's likeness in you.

 Reigning means revealing God, and it's often our crosses that provide the opportunity for us to do that well.

You see, some of us don't realize that when we make it the utmost goal of our lives to curate a pain-free existence, running from hardship, avoiding responsibility in the kingdom of God, you are actually robbing yourself of the very conditions that allow you to most clearly reveal what God is like.

 Men, when your families are feeling the pressures of serving God, is it your proclivity to shield them and to back away from the call of God upon your family's life?

Or is it your proclivity to stand firm and set the example of what it looks like to be a kingdom family, not to run from the dragon, but to face off with the dragon and know that you're nourished by Jesus in the midst of that wilderness?

 This is the call of revelation to us.

And this is exactly where the clash with Babylon comes in because Babylon is the world's system that promises you comfort, security, and status if you'll just compromise your loyalty to Jesus.

And John's readers felt that pressure from Rome's religious environment.

Hey, honor our gods and we'll buy from your business.

Worship Caesar and we'll leave you alone.

 That was their religious environment, and we feel it today in subtler but no less powerful ways.

Our world is no less religious than theirs.

We're just dogmatic about different things.

We don't do exile, we do cancel culture.

We don't worship Artemis, we worship sexual identity.

We don't worship Caesar, we worship Wall Street.

Where are the battle lines of Babylon drawn in your context?

 In the ideologies that your co-workers just expect you to affirm without question.

In the sinful practices of your industry that you are pressured to normalize.

In the anti-Christ and anti-human tendencies of your political party or your cultural tribe.

Friends, the battle lines are everywhere and Revelation is sounding the alarm.

Wake up, church.

Come out of Babylon.

Come on.

 Not by withdrawing from the world, but by resisting compromise within it.

Because Babylon does not care if you worship God.

So long as he's just one among many.

And those gods aren't called Zeus and Artemis.

They're called Jake and James.

It's yourself.

It's all of ourselves.

 John was exiled because of the word of God, which is the testimony of Jesus.

The second part of the phrase defines the first.

That's really important because I find a lot of the time Christians are comfortable sharing the word of God, just minus the exclusivity of Jesus part.

So maybe you feel comfortable sharing God's principles, or God's wisdom, or demonstrating God's kindness.

 But friends, if all your demonstration of the kindness of God and the wisdom of God does not eventually lead to you sharing with somebody, hey, your faith must be in Christ Jesus for the sake of your salvation.

If you do not get there, then I'm not sure we're being as kind as we think we are.

God's principles will not save a man.

Christ alone.

And I get why we get gun-tried, because the exclusivity of Christ is where you begin to pay the price.

 But if he is your proclamation and practice, you will pay the price.

And that's where your witness begins to matter.

How do you sustain that witness?

You do it with a clear vision of Jesus.

The one who consoles and the one who, we're getting a lot of this so far in the message, corrects.

That's why John's vision at the start of Revelation is so vital because what you see of Jesus determines how you stand in Babylon.

 John continues in verse 10.

On the Lord's day, I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet which said, write on a scroll what you see.

So John says, on the Lord's day, I was in the Spirit.

In the Spirit means he was having a visionary experience.

And notice when that visionary experience happens, it happens on the Lord's day.

At the most basic level, that means Sunday.

 The day that the early church set aside to gather and to worship the risen Lord.

Guess what?

Sunday belongs to Him.

Don't give it away to somebody else.

Don't give it away to something else.

 It's the Lord's day.

And that matters not only because you should give God the first day of your week, it matters also because on the first day of your week, God wants to give you something.

He wants to give you a vision of his kingdom, of your ultimate hope.

You see, that phrase, the Lord's day, it echoes a phrase that the Old Testament prophets use, the day of the Lord.

 The phrase they use to describe the climactic moment at the end of history when God defeats evil, establishes justice, and brings his kingdom in fullness.

And Revelation is the unveiling of that ultimate day.

The fall of Babylon, the defeat of the dragon, and the renewal of creation.

 Revelation unveils the reality of the kingdom of God through this apocalypse.

And in that apocalypse we see singing, and sacrifice, and servanthood, and true love, and power, and glory.

And so yes, John was worshiping Jesus on a Sunday when he was caught up in the Spirit.

But the point of that spiritual vision was to show John and show us what every Sunday really is.

It's an in-breaking of ultimate reality into our here and now.

 You see, on the island of Patmos, John had no congregation like this with which to sing hymns.

He had no Eucharistic table.

He had nobody to preach to.

No fellowship.

And yet God gives him the worship service to end all worship services.

The day of the Lord colliding with the Lord's day.

And through that vision we are reminded what is happening every time we gather.

Heaven breaks in.

The future invades the present.

 You see, that's the point, that the coming day of the Lord is meant to contextualize all of our other days.

God has fixed a day when Christ will return, evil will be judged, Babylon will fall, all things will be made new, and every Sunday as the church gathers, we step into a foretaste of that day.

Sunday is not just another church service.

According to the Gospel of John, Sunday, the day of resurrection, is the eighth.

 day.

The first day of new creation folding over into the old creation.

So when we gather on the Lord's day, we're meant to taste most potently the reality of the coming kingdom of God.

Here you are discipled by the hymns of heaven that proclaim God's glory.

 Here you are discipled by servanthood which proclaims God's lamb.

Here you are discipled by the table of the Lord that proclaims God's sacrifice.

You're discipled by giving that proclaims God's generosity.

You're discipled by hospitality that proclaims the welcoming heart of God.

You're discipled by the living word of God that proclaims God's wisdom.

Sunday is weekly training for the last day breaking in today.

And in other words, we don't come here to spectate.

 We come here to see, to see things as they truly are in light of the Lord's coming.

Sunday worship reframes the week because it gives you a vision of Jesus and what you see of Jesus determines how you stand in Babylon.

This is what John is helping us to grasp.

Verse 12, I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me.

And when I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.

 Later in the passage, we learn that these lampstands symbolize the seven churches and therefore the universal church.

This image of the lampstand draws on two Old Testament pictures.

First, the lampstand in Moses' tabernacle stood in the holy place and signified the presence of God illuminating the people of Israel.

Second, it connects to Zechariah the prophet, his prophetic vision of a lampstand that was kept burning by a continual supply of oil.

 where God declared, hey, the temple's gonna be built.

My people are gonna be built, not by power, not by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord.

Put together, the point is clear.

The church's role is to reflect God's presence in the midst of a hostile world.

And the only way she shines is by the power of the spirit.

He is the oil that keeps the flame burning against a thousand threats and a thousand temptations.

Now notice this church, that the church is the lampstand and not the lamp.

 That we carry the light, but we are not the light.

On our own, we cannot shine.

We need the Spirit to illuminate Christ to us and Christ through us, because He is the light with which we are meant to shine to one another and out to the world.

You see, John sees the churches for what they are.

Some of them have gotten a little bit too high of an opinion of themselves.

 John needs to show them who you really are.

You're not the lamp.

You're the lampstand.

And the only way a lampstand has a hope in fulfilling its purpose is if it remains available to and animated by the power of the Spirit, the presence of Jesus.

You see, the purpose of a lampstand is not to be a lampstand.

It's to be a light.

But a lampstand cannot be a light if it does not remain intimately connected to the flame that is meant to rest on top of it.

Are we willing?

Oh, I think we are.

 Are we willing to maintain that intimate connection with Jesus no matter what it costs?

Or will we become content to devolve into being a lampstand without a flame, playing church, doing pseudo-churchy stuff, but no fire?

This is what we see in Jesus.

 Some of the mainline denominations across the West today who still meet in church buildings but they preach a neutered gospel.

And they have become mouthpieces for all kinds of causes that are antithetical to the kingdom of God.

And yet in the name of justice and empathy, they promote and practice things that destroy human lives.

Their creeds are not the apostles and the Nicene.

Their creed is the creed of expressive individualism.

Churchy stuff but no fire.

 What about you and I personally?

Are we seeking to shine in this world with the light of our own presence, our own ideas, our own opinions?

Or are you trying to reflect the ideas of this world because you think that that will give you safe standing in Babylon?

Friends, you are never more unsafe than when you are welcomed and celebrated by Babylon.

Or do you want to shine with the power and the presence of Jesus?

 If you've lost your way, it's not too late to fix that.

Look where Jesus, the great comforter and corrector, stands in relation to the lampstands, verse 13.

And among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe, reaching down to his feet with a golden sash around his chest.

This figure is Jesus.

 The one who is enthroned at the right hand of the Father stands in the midst of his struggling sinful churches.

So much of the imagery that is in this vision we read earlier, it's imagery pulled directly from descriptions of Yahweh, of God himself in the Old Testament.

The message is very true.

 clear, Jesus is the one true God.

He's not just another God in Rome's pantheon of gods.

He's the one true God, and he's in the midst of his people.

He's not far off.

He's not distant.

He's near, and he's near to you and I here today.

No matter what baggage we've come into this place with, no matter what sin has tripped us up this week, Jesus has come into the midst of the lampstand of cathedral this Sunday to welcome us, to comfort us, but also to correct us.

 Some of you who are flagging in your faithfulness to Jesus need to see this picture of him today.

What's the first detail that John highlights?

It's his long robe that Jesus is wearing and the golden sash around his chest.

I learned that normally a sash is tied around the waist.

And the reason it's tied around the waist is so that somebody could fold up their robe and tuck it into their sash, their belt, whenever they needed to go to work.

 But Jesus' sash is not tied around his waist, it's tied around his chest.

Why?

Because the work is finished.

There is nothing else needed for the work of forgiveness to be completed for you and I.

 Christ is more royal than Caesar, and yet his royalty doesn't introduce distance or make him untouchable.

It's the royalty of a king who stooped to serve.

His sash does not speak of separation, it speaks of service.

That's the Jesus in our midst.

That's the Jesus we need to know when we are trapped in our sin, is to draw near to him, the one who dignifies and restores.

 Verse 14, the hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.

His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

Just to pick up on two of these images here in the middle, his eyes like fire, his feet like bronze glowing in a furnace.

This is what it looks like for Jesus to stand in our midst as consolation and correction.

 Some scholars, they point to the image of the feet like bronze in a furnace and point out how that echoes the fiery furnace in Babylon where the three Hebrew boys were to be martyred because they refused to bow to the idol that Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, had constructed of himself.

And as they're thrown into the fire of the furnace, you know the story, they are joined by a fourth figure who delivered them from the flames.

 And here Jesus' feet glow like bronze refined in a fiery furnace, a reminder that he is the fourth man in every fire, that he was with those who suffered in ancient Babylon, and he is still with those who endure through trials and tribulations throughout the wilderness of this age.

In fact, it's fascinating to me that Jesus' bronze feet are still glowing as if they're in that furnace.

 That's something bronze only does as long as it's held in proximity to the heat.

His feet haven't cooled.

They haven't taken on a polished, finished, varnished look.

No, his feet are still glowing because he's still close to the fire.

It's like when Jesus appeared to Paul when Paul was on the way to Damascus to arrest Christians and Jesus appears to Paul in this blinding light and he says, Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?

 Imagine that moment, Paul thought, not really sure who you are, but I'm not persecuting you, I'm persecuting them.

Jesus says, no, you don't understand.

My intimacy with my church is so close that whatever is done to them is done to me.

You are persecuting me.

Whatever fire you are walking through, Christ himself is with you, present in the midst of that fire.

He is present to the heart of his church.

 He's with you in your financial fire.

He's with you in your marital fire.

He's with you in your health crisis.

He's with you in your inner struggle with those dark thoughts, the fight for your life, the fight for your purity, the fight for your identity.

He's with you patiently in the suffering and his presence in the fire signals victory because he himself has walked through suffering.

He's endured the furnace of the cross.

He bears the marks of it in his body and his presence signals the victory of resurrection power.

 That's the Jesus who stands in the midst of his churches, present and reminding them that victory is certain.

It's already secured because there is no grave that Christ himself does not know the way out of.

His presence is for your consolation, but also for your correction.

His eyes blaze like fire, which symbolize his piercing sight and perfect judgment.

 He sees directly into our hearts, exposing our motives and judging rightly at every moment.

You see, Jesus doesn't only walk with you in the furnace of hardship.

He also uses the furnace to reveal the impurities that remain in us.

And at the revelation of those impurities, he calls us to repentance, to change, and therefore to growth.

This is a good shepherd.

 He comforts.

He corrects.

This is why it's so vital that you and I's life includes all manner of spiritual disciplines and practices, the disciplines of community, prayer, silence, meditation upon scripture.

Because these are the means by which you draw near to Jesus in the middle of the furnace and you invite him to reveal what needs to be purified.

You need rhythms.

You need rhythms.

 That allow his searching sight to show you things about yourself.

Please don't be one of those Christians who only wants the friend in the fiery furnace and never the searching gaze of Jesus looking into your heart.

Don't be the Christian who runs from the inside of the Lord.

And when that comes, sometimes that will mean that he has to wound you.

 but he wounds with holy love not to cut down, but to make you stronger.

It's like the re-breaking of a bone that is healed incorrectly, and Jesus must fix it so that you may be able to stand firm in your faithful witness.

Let's jump ahead to verse 17.

Team, you guys can come.

How we doing?

Is the word of God good?

 John has this vision of Jesus.

We'll have so much time to touch every single part of it because all of these elements in this inaugural vision of Jesus are gonna come up again piece by piece in the seven letters to the seven churches that begin in chapter two.

They're constantly pointed back to the vision of Jesus.

And so we're gonna see those come up.

For now in verse 17, John says, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

Just picture this.

 You see Jesus in all of his holiness.

John falls at his feet as though dead, and then Jesus placed his right hand on me and said, do not be afraid.

I am the first and the last.

I am the living one.

I was dead.

And now look.

I love Jesus.

Look.

I'm alive.

Forever and ever.

And I hold the keys of death and hate.

 John sees the risen Christ in glory and he collapses at his feet like a dead man, which is exactly what anybody would do if they saw Christ in his complete blazing glory.

No one would be able to stand.

But then comes the contrast in the text.

Because the one before whom John falls down dead is the living one.

The one who was dead and is now alive forever.

Who holds the keys of death and Hades.

 And Jesus takes his right hand, the same hand that holds the seven stars, and he touches John and he raises him to his feet.

As one commentator said, that the one who controls the cosmos consoles the individual.

This is a picture of the gospel itself.

That before the perfect holy Christ, we fall down in unworthiness.

 The risen Christ who conquered death restores us, forgives us, strengthens us, and calls us.

We've seen this before in the Bible, right?

This is like what God does for Isaiah, the prophet.

 You see, Isaiah, before he was a prophet, was just an ordinary guy like you and I. In Isaiah chapter 6, he has this vision of Yahweh.

He says, I saw the Lord high and lifted up.

And the train of his robe, like his cape alone, filled the temple with glory.

And he was surrounded by seraphim.

Seraphim is literally translated burning ones, fiery guys.

 These angelic creatures who were praising God in such a way that the temple itself was filled with smoke and shaken its foundations.

 And then one of these seraphim, they fly over to Isaiah.

And Isaiah's going, woe is me.

I'm an unclean man.

I'm a sinful man.

And I dwell among sinful people.

And here comes this burning one with a hot coal from the altar of God.

Now, just put yourself in that position.

There's a burning one from heaven coming towards you in a smoky scene holding a hot coal.

And you're keenly aware of your sinfulness.

What are you thinking in that moment?

You're thinking, I'm cooked.

 But then the seraphim does something so unexpected.

He takes the coal and he touches Isaiah's mouth.

And says, your guilt and your sin has been taken away and atoned for.

And then God asks the question.

He says, who can I send?

Who will go for us?

 It's an amazing question because this is Isaiah's personal vision.

He's the only one there.

Who else is going to answer?

And yet God does not do coercion.

God does calling.

So Isaiah doesn't get cooked, he gets called.

 And it's up to him to respond to the call of God.

Because here's the gospel.

The gospel comes with cleansing.

And then the cleansing comes with calling.

And there are some people in the church today who have begun to flag in the calling of God.

And you've received the cleansing.

And you're like John who's having this holy vision of Jesus.

And it's comfort.

But it's also correction.

And you fall down because you're just reminded of how holy he is.

And God wants to remind you of how he wants to comfort you.

 But he also wants to remind you that you are called.

And he corrects you for the sake of your calling.

This is not about shame.

This is about formation.

This is about the fact that God has a plan for your life, for our church.

And he wants to realign us back with his calling, his heavenly calling, so that we can stand firm and march on.

Because what you see of Jesus determines how you stand in Babylon.

 So that's what God does for John and for you and I here with the vision.

God did not need to show John a vision of the sun.

We could have just jumped straight to the seven letters to the seven churches.

You're doing this pretty good.

You're really bad at that.

Gonna need you to go ahead and fix that.

Otherwise, I'm gonna take away your lamp stand.

I'm gonna spit you out of my mouth.

All of that.

We could have just jumped straight to that.

But God doesn't do that.

He begins with a vision of Jesus.

 Because it's not just about the command you hear.

It's about the presence you encounter.

If Christ's likeness and living out our calling was just a matter of command, we could all stay home and read our Bibles.

 But we come together to the table of the Lord to encounter the risen Christ.

And as we see him, we behold him.

As we behold him, we become like him.

We are formed back into his image.

And we march on in the calling of God, standing firm in the midst of a Babylonian system.