Revelation 1:10-20; Revealing the Christ

Thank you so much for having us.

It is really a joy and a an honor to be here with you this morning.

And uh so Jason, when he asked me to preach, he told me to bring my gospel fastball.

So I was like, all right, we're gonna do revelation naturally.

Um and uh but I the the reason I I chose this passage is it's it's one that has stuck with me um really for the past five years since I first preached through Revelation and um and one that I've been thinking a lot recently because we we went through Revelation in the spring, and um it's it's it's it's an one of those images that just sticks with you.

I was I was thinking about this on the way up.

I um I was I was late on this.

I just I did go see the Odyssey yesterday.

Um so now I can catch up with like conversation that everyone is is having.

Um but I was thinking about it, it's like it's one of those movies that like it sticks with you.

Like you you you leave the theater and and all the the the images and the scenery and and the story and the characters they like they leave with you.

And and it it feels a lot like this passage where where John um describes uh who Jesus is and what he's come to do and what your reality is now with this perspective of Jesus.

And it's an image that really it I hope it sticks with you as you leave this morning.

Um and I'm gonna I'm gonna read this passage for us, but what I want to point out as I read is that John is writing this as a messenger and uh yes, as a prophet, but primarily he's writing this uh letter as a pastor.

Um he's writing this as a pastoral letter to his churches.

Um, and I I love this, is this is when when John was given this revelation, it wasn't a general revelation about something that's gonna happen in the future.

It is a revelation of Jesus, it is a revelation from Jesus, and it is a revelation about Jesus.

I love uh this quote from a guy named Michael Gorman in his book, Reading Revelation Responsibly.

He says this he says, Revelation is not about the Antichrist, but the living Christ.

It's not about the rapture out of this world, but faithful discipleship in this world.

That is, like every other book in the New Testament, Revelation is about Jesus Christ, about following him in obedience and in love in your life now.

With that in mind, let me read this to you.

I'm gonna start in verse 10, and this is in uh Revelation chapter 1, uh page 1044 in your pew Bible.

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

John writes this I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, which means he was communing with God on a Sunday, on the day of the resurrection.

I was in the spirit in the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Tiatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Ladicea.

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 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.

In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

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 in 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

We pray for us.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this passage.

Uh thank you that you are not a God who stays far off, but you are a God who comes near.

Um, that you could be doing anything else anywhere else, and you choose um to be with us.

You choose to commune with us this morning, that you send your spirit to be with us.

I pray, Lord, that you would give us new eyes to see you, would you give us ears to hear you?

Would you give us hearts and minds that turn to you and be healed?

And we pray these things all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So um I have been reading through the Chronicles of Narnia with our kids.

Uh, and um one of the things that uh just is like hitting me again as I read through them.

Uh I love the way that Lewis portrays Aslan throughout all the series.

Um, because anytime a character encounters Aslan, you get this sense of terror and dread.

Like you're in the presence of something that is otherworldly, is terrifying.

You know, it like we do such a good job of managing our perception and our reputation and making sure that people see the person we want other people to see and not the real us.

And yet when you come into contact with Aslan, he sees through all of your managing and all of your fig leaves and all of your covering up, he sees the real you.

And it's terrifying, but you also get this sense of otherworldly peace and comfort that even though he sees the real you, that he loves you, and he is for your good, like he's utterly good, and there's this scene that really highlights that when when the children first get into Narnia and they meet Mr.

and Mrs.

Beaver, and Mr.

and Mrs.

Beaver take them into their house and they make them tea and they they um make them food and they're kind of explaining what is about to happen.

And Mr.

Beaver tells Susan and Lucy and the boys about Aslan, and he says, You'll understand when you see him.

And Susan says, Oh, we're gonna see him.

And Mr.

Beaver says, Why, daughter of Eve, that's why I brought you here.

I'm to lead you where you shall meet him.

And Lucy asks, Is he a man?

And Mr.

Beaver sternly says, Aslan, a man?

Certainly not.

I tell you, he's the king of the wood and the son of the great emperor beyond the sea.

Don't you know who is the king of the beasts?

Aslan is a lion.

He's the lion.

He is the great lion.

And Susan said, Oh, I thought he was a man.

Is he safe?

And Mr.

Beaver says, Safe?

Don't you hear what I tell you?

Who said anything about safe?

Of course he isn't safe, but he is good.

He's the king, I tell you.

And then when they meet him, they understand that it is both terrifying and comforting.

It is it is the thing that scares you most, and yet the thing that you most long for, because you are completely and utterly known in his presence.

Is he safe?

No.

Is he good?

Absolutely.

And I think this, I start off with that because I think this is the picture we get of Jesus in this passage.

Like when John describes Jesus, Jesus is not safe.

He has eyes like fire that purify you, a voice like rushing waters.

Is his words are sharper than a two-edged sword.

And yet, this is the picture we need most of who Jesus is and what he's come to do.

And it is the foundation for the rest of his pastoral letter.

And I think two things John wants to get across to us is he wants us to see the hope we have in Christ, the hope of the vision and the call of the vision.

The hope of the vision and the call of the vision.

Uh, I think it would be incredibly easy to miss this very important detail.

Because of the way that he he describes Jesus, right?

His eyes and his white hair and his long robe and his sash and and his burnished bronze and his voice.

But something that would be so easy to gloss over is what we find out in verse 12.

When he turns to see the voice, and on turning, he sees where the man is, where Jesus chooses to be in the midst of the lampstands, literally in the middle of the lampstands.

And what we find out in verse 20 is that the lampstands are the seven churches.

And what John wants you to see, what we're witnessing in this passage, is that Jesus, in all of his otherworldly glory, unbound by space and time, who could be doing anything else anywhere else.

And he chooses to be in the midst of the church.

He chooses to be in here with us this morning.

He chooses to be with his people through the local expression of Christ's body.

That's where he promises to be.

That's what he cares about.

And John is saying, don't bother looking for him anywhere else because he's not going to be there.

He's found in the gathering of the saints.

And if you keep reading this letter, what you find out in Revelation 2 and 3 is that these churches weren't really places that you would read about and think Jesus must be there.

What you encounter in the first, the very first church in Revelation 2 in Ephesus is that they love their doctrine and they love arguing and they love apologetics, and they forgot their love about Jesus.

And you keep reading and you find stories of rampant, unrepentant sexual sin in these churches.

They're messy.

They're places that you would walk into and think, Jesus must not want to be here.

And maybe you're here this morning and it feels like you've given up all hope on the church.

Maybe you've been hurt by the church.

Maybe you feel like this is your last Sunday and you're gonna walk out of here and never come back again.

And I want you to know that Jesus hasn't given up on the church.

Jesus hasn't lost hope in the church.

Jesus plans to bring redemption and healing and reconciliation through his church.

This is where he is.

You're not gonna find him somewhere else.

I want us to let that sink in.

Like we're talking about the church, right?

This new sanctuary that we're in.

It's talking about the building.

It's talking about the congregation, the people in the building, with pastors and elders, and church ladies, and casseroles, and potlucks, and fellowship halls, and baptisms, and and and families and sermons and communion and hymns and pews, and that guy who stands behind you and sings off key every Sunday.

Right?

It's so easy for us to fall into the trap of just going through the motions on Sunday morning and complaining that maybe the sermon didn't hit us the way we wanted it to.

John wants to ignite our Christian imagination by this picture of Jesus standing in the midst of your local expression of the church in this very congregation, because it is in her presence that he chooses to dwell, forgiving her, guiding her, making his face to shine on her.

Eugene Peterson says this.

He says, the church so full of ambiguity and so marred with cruelty and cowardice, and so tarnished with hypocrisy and sin, and yet it is no use looking for Jesus in pure surroundings.

It is his will to identify himself in revelation with the church.

Yes, Christ is pre-existent with the Father.

He is glorious in heavens, but he is only received in the everyday precincts of the church.

This is where Christ chooses to be.

And what's he doing there?

We see Jesus clothed with a long robe and a golden sash.

These are the vestiges of a priest.

This is what Aaron, the high priest, wore.

And what does a priest do?

A priest is a bridge builder.

A priest is someone who grabs you by the hand and God by the hand and connects you together.

And it means that Jesus is just as much on our side as he is on God's side, and he's just as much on God's side as he is on our side.

And he chooses to be in your midst to bring you to God, to give us access to the Father through his forgiveness and healing.

It means that the living Christ is with us, but not only that, he's for us.

He's with us, and he's for us.

We find out that in his right hand he holds seven stars.

And these are the angels of the churches.

It's a picture of the church.

That Jesus is so for us that he holds us in his right hand the hand of power, the hand of decision-making, the hand of authority, the hand of creation.

And John wants us to see that even when we feel out of control, the Jesus that stands in your midst, he not only stands with you, but he holds you in his hand and he is in control.

If if you if you know anything about Greco-Roman astrology, back in the day, the way that they understood their reality was by following the pattern of the stars.

And so they they would look up at the sky and they would see the stars in the sky, and they kind of envisioned them like a sea of stars in the sky, making these waves and and rotating and changing, and there was a pattern to it.

And this is this is how they would understand the reality, what was going on in their day.

It's how they would they would depict things about the future, right?

It was their religion.

But one of the things they knew is that there were seven stars that didn't follow the same pattern as all the other stars.

There was the Sun and the Moon and Mercury and Mars and Venus and Jupiter and Saturn.

And if you know anything about Greek mythology or Roman mythology, these are the names of Greek and Roman gods.

Their gods were named after these stars.

Or they believed these stars to be their gods.

They believed these stars to be the controllers of the universe.

And what John is saying is that Jesus holds in his right hand, his hand of authority, he holds the the controllers of the universe.

He's not just any king, he is the king of all kings.

He's not just any God, he is the Lord of all lords, the arch ruler, the creator, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

Whatever you think is in control, Jesus is in control of that thing.

It feels like Rome is in control and Jesus is in control of Rome.

And you think of the hope that it would bring to churches suffering persecution.

And you would think of the wake-up call it would be to board Christians in the pews, and you would think of the expulsive power of that image that would have on Christians putting their trust in something else.

Some of you might be in here this morning and you feel like you're under the weight of the world.

Maybe you're here and you're sending off your first child to college, and it feels like control is slipping through your fingers.

Maybe you are the student who's going off to college and you're you're wondering who you're gonna be when you get there.

Who's gonna accept me?

Maybe you're here and you're sending your last child off to college, and you're entering into this new phase of life, and you have no idea what life as an empty nesture is gonna look like, and you don't even know who you are without your kids.

Maybe you're here and your marriage feels like a constant war zone, and you don't know when things are gonna get better.

Feels like artificial intelligence is taking over the job market.

Will I even have a job in a few years?

Who am I without my job?

I'm graduating next year.

Am I gonna get a job?

Maybe you're here and you're just becoming more and more in touch with your own mortality as age becomes this continual reminder that life is short and time is finite.

Wherever you are, you're a lot like the Christians in these churches that John is writing to.

And you need to see Jesus in this new way, this Jesus who is in control of all things.

That you don't have to be in control because he is.

And that he doesn't ask you to be in control, he calls you to follow him.

And that's the call of the vision.

The hope of the vision is that Jesus is in control.

Jesus is with you and he's for you, and he works all things for God's glory and for the good of his people.

The call of the vision is to follow him.

It's the same call he gave his disciples on the shore.

It's the same call he gave to the rich young ruler.

It's the same call that he gave to John.

It's the same call for the disciples in John's churches, it's the same call for you and me.

Jesus through this vision is saying, Follow me.

This vision of Jesus is a clear and direct call on our lives to faithful discipleship to Jesus Christ.

Whether you've lost sight of who Jesus is, or you've grown numb to who Jesus is, or you've forged for yourself a different kind of Jesus than the one we find in Scripture, John is revealing to us that the living Christ, the one who's on the throne, the one who is, the one who was, the one who is to come, he invites us to fear not and to follow him.

And what we find.

In John's response, the way we follow him is worship and obedience.

Verse 17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

It's this involuntary response for John.

It happened to him.

When he encountered Jesus, he couldn't stand on his own two feet.

He fell at his feet as though dead in worship.

He could no longer stand in the presence of such glory and honor and power.

He has no other choice but to worship and to revere and to center his entire life around this one vision, not because of the vision of self, but because of the person in the vision.

Right?

Worship doesn't just happen on Sunday morning.

It does happen in the spirit on the Lord's day.

Yes, and amen.

But it doesn't just happen there.

Worship happens throughout all of our lives.

It happens when Jesus is our center of gravity, when we orient all of our work and all of our finances, right?

All of our heart, soul, and win and strength.

And that word strength, it means all that we have, our lifeblood, all of our resources is oriented to this one.

The one who is in control.

The God who was before anything else, the God who is in our midst right now, and the God who will remain standing after all other kingdoms fall.

John wants us to see this God of our worship.

He's not a tame God.

He's not a God who is going to be controlled.

He is not a God who needs our help.

He's not a God who's appeased by our goodness.

He is goodness itself.

He is, Wendell Berry says, the wildest being in creation.

And he doesn't need us, he invites us.

I found this fascinating.

Y'all know in the the story in Exodus where Moses goes and he finds uh when he encounters God, he encounters God in a burning bush.

Right?

The bush was aflame.

But what he noticed about the bush is that it the bush was on fire, but it wasn't burning up.

And it's this picture of God's presence.

God is the source in the energy of the fire.

He doesn't need the bush itself.

He doesn't, the the fire is not consuming energy from the bush.

He is the all-sufficient God.

And that all-sufficient God, he doesn't need us, he invites us into his worship.

He invites us to follow him.

Our worship is his kindness to us.

It reignites our imagination for worship, but it reignites our will to obedience.

John not only worships, he obeys.

The voice tells him to write things down in a book, he writes it down in a book and sends it to the seven churches.

And what he says, just a few verses earlier in chapter one, he says, Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it.

To keep his words are to guard them in our hearts and to practice them in our lives.

He beckons us to follow him, listening to his words, hearing his words.

And when the Bible uses that word hear, it means to hear and to take hold of and to practice them, to obey what he says, to model our life after his.

It affects how we work and how we rest.

It affects how we treat our spouse and our children.

It affects what we watch and what we listen to.

It affects how we think about money and family and worship.

And it is only through a lifetime of this kind of worship and obedience, this discipleship, that Jesus himself changes you.

And he does it sometimes gently, and he does it sometimes very abruptly, but he purifies you with fiery trials, so that his words work their way into your bones and change you at a cellular level.

That his presence defrosts the cold chambers of our hearts, and he brings us into life everlasting.

That's what he means when John says his face was like the sun shining at full strength.

Y'all ever um y'all know the benediction that's used sometimes where we say, May God make his face to shine on you.

That means may God bless you.

May you walk in the comfort and the delight of God.

And John is saying that this Jesus, the one with the words that are sharper than two-edged sword, the ones whose eyes are like on fire, the ones whose feet are like burnished bronze, the one um whose hairs are white like white wool, like snow, his face is like the sun shining in full strength.

It is the fullness of the fullest blessings of God.

The one whose presence you stand in that could destroy you.

And he chooses with the abundance of his blessings to pour out his blessings upon you.

Is he safe?

No.

Is he good?

Absolutely.

This is Mr.

Beaver's uh description of Aslan from the end of that conversation before.

He says, Wrong will be right when he comes in sight.

At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.

When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death, and when he shakes his mane, we will have spring again.

He is the first and the last.

He has taken away the power of death, and he chooses to be with us, and he chooses to be for us, and his invitation for us is to fear not and follow him.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank ye that you are the God of all creation, that we couldn't make this stuff up, that uh that you really do come to us in a way that we can understand, and that you are not a God who stays far off.

You're a God who comes near, and you're a God who stands in our midst, and you're a God who dwells with us, and you're a God who brings us out of darkness into the light, you're a God who makes the wrong things right.

You're a God um who runs after the lost sheep.

I I pray, Lord, um, that you would bring us into the fullness of your salvation, that would experience your your face like the signing the shining sun in full strength.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.