Revelation 22

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.

And it's my great joy and privilege to be leading us through the last chapter, chapter 22, of the last book of the 66 books in the library that we call the Bible.

Here we are in Revelation 22.

We began all the way, oh, I can't even remember what the date was, but all the way back to chapter one, we began talking about how people typically have a couple of different approaches to revelation.

Some people avoid it and don't actually approach it, but they avoid it.

It's too complicated, feels too much like a prophecy jigsaw puzzle they got to put together or uh some kind of heavenly cipher that they've got to de-cipher and figure out with the number codes and all that sort of.

And that that um has led some people just to avoid the book altogether.

Others are completely obsessed with it.

And uh they find something in the book of Revelation that parallels or uh relates in some way to this little tiny slice of time and history and space that they live in.

And that's been happening for years and years and years.

Um, so we wanted to not do that.

We were interested in, as verse three of chapter one says, uh, blessed are those who hear and heed.

And we wanted to hear this book, let it speak to us.

It's three different, at least three different genres of literature.

Apocalyptic, which is a word that means revelation, it means an unveiling.

Uh, so it's apocalyptic literature in that regard.

Uh, it is also prophetic literature.

It is uh the, you know, the prophets used to uh they were engaged in foretelling future events as God revealed it to them, but they were also uh engaged in forthelling.

They were they were speaking on behalf of God to the people.

And so it's prophetic in that way.

Um, and then it's also epistolary.

That is, it's a letter, and it begins that way, it ends that way.

And there are, even in the concept context of chapters two and three, there are these letters to these seven churches.

And by extension, we have so much we can learn uh as we have read those letters, studied those letters.

We've seen all the cycles of seven that have, you know, repeated over and over again, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls of God's wrath.

And it has led us away, I think, as as really Jesus is the one that this unveils and reveals.

It has led us away from worrying about the future.

And it has led us to wonder and worship of the Lamb of God who was slain on our behalf, who rose again, and who now lives to reign forever and ever.

One of my mentors that I've been reading along the way, I love uh reading uh commentaries and articles and listening to other preachers and all that sort of thing.

And um, Eugene Peterson, the wise sage-like pastor theologian um who's gone home to heaven now to be with the Lord, but he has a book called Reverse Thunder, in which he says nothing is more explicit in this book than that it is about God.

It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, not the end of the world, not the identity of the Antichrist, not the timetable of history.

The use of the I throughout the text makes this unmistakable.

Jesus Christ as Lord and the God of Jesus Christ speak in the first person to tell us who Jesus is.

So that's a revealing of Jesus Christ, the revelation of Jesus Christ, right?

And he says, I am the Alpha and Omega in the opening proclamation there, uh, or to tell us what he does.

And he says, this behold, I make all things new in the closing proclamation.

We studied that uh last week in chapter 21.

And so uh Peterson's right on there about that and writes so brilliantly in his uh uh sort of running commentary on the book of Revelation.

So without further ado and no lengthy, uh no longer a lengthy introduction, if you want to look up the outline for the book and all that sort of thing, I've done that several times already.

And I encourage you to go back and uh uh watch those or listen down to those on our podcasts.

Uh you can get to all of that through the uh Village Chapel YouTube page.

But here's chapter 22, the last chapter of the entire book of Revelation, the last chapter of the entire Bible.

I want to sit up straight and hear from God.

I hope you do too.

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

All right, so the he here that John is writing about is one of the angels that is leading and guiding him through some of these visions that he's having.

And he showed John a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

And that's together.

That just shows the union of God the Father and the Lamb, Jesus Christ, okay?

In the middle of its street, right in the middle, it's unavoidable.

It's, you know, as as he's showing him this, it's right in the middle of its street.

And on either side of the river was the tree of life.

So you got the river of life and you got the tree of life.

And this is a great way to end the book, man.

It's awesome.

The river of life and the tree of life, bearing 12 kinds of fruit.

And again, 12, that sort of number of uh uh of completion, everything together, so to speak.

12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles, uh, these representing the the sort of all of the people of God.

And so 12 is a great number.

Um, and it has 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And so here is this uh sign of uh fertility and and and life, and it's the tree of life, and it's the river of life, and it's the fruit that's just always in you know in bloom and and and yielding uh great fruit every month.

There shall no longer be any curse, and uh gotta say that again.

There shall no longer be any curse.

And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, meaning in this tree and in this river, okay, and in this street, right?

And his bondservants shall serve him, they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.

And we've had that image before too, because there were those from uh those who f who fell into the city of Babylon and uh fell into the lies and deception of the great dragon and of the great prostitute, and they have the mark of the beast on their foreheads.

And what that means is there's they're owned by, they they want to be marked, they want to belong to, they want to be owned by the beast, and and every force and authority that sets itself at odds with God, and that's what Babylon stands for throughout the book of Revelation.

But here is in contrast to that, these are the folks who have the name of God uh on their forehead.

His name shall be on their foreheads, and they belong to God.

And you know, folks, um your greatest longing in life, my greatest longing of our souls, the deepest part of who we are, uh, is to know the one we belong to ultimately, and to be in right relationship with him.

And throughout this book, he has made it clear that he invites you to be in right relationship with him based on the finished work of Christ, um, the Lion of Judah, the root of David, the lamb who was slain, is risen again.

And it's all of Christ.

And so you're invited.

I'm invited.

Who wouldn't want that?

Let's have our his name on our foreheads.

Verse five, and there shall no longer be any night, and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them, and they shall reign forever and ever.

In other words, every essential need will be met in Christ.

Uh, there shall no longer be any night.

Man, kids, if you're listening, uh some of you are probably thinking, does that mean I never have to go to bed?

I can stay up all night?

Yes.

But that's when we get there, okay?

That's so parents don't get mad at me for that.

But no, no longer any need for the light or the lamp of the sun.

Why?

Because the Lord God Himself is our light, uh, and they shall reign forever and ever.

So we we we join together with the Lord uh in his mission, in his creation, or I should say, in his new creation, as we read last week.

We have the new heavens, the new earth, the new Jerusalem, uh as it as it descended out of the heavens down to where John was, and how vast it was.

Uh over three million cubic miles, you know, uh, this this city, this this new Jerusalem, if you will.

Verse 6, and he said to me, Okay, these words are faithful and true.

And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show to his bondservants the things which must shortly take place.

Now, as we read through this, it's gonna sometimes be a little difficult to figure out who it is that's speaking.

In my Bible, right here, the New American Standard, um, this appears to be the angel saying that.

He is the last one that was a sort of referred to.

So he, this angel said to him, The words, these words are faithful and true.

The Lord, the God of the spirits of prophets, sent his angel to show his bondservants the things which must.

That's a beautiful four-letter word.

In other words, God's will and purposes and plan will be accomplished.

Okay, all of that shortly take place.

And behold, uh, now this is in in my Bible, this is in in red letters, and so I uh these uh uh translators of this English Bible um think this is Jesus saying, and I think that makes sense given what's said here.

And it's said three different times in this chapter, all right?

Behold, I am coming quickly.

Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.

Okay, now I want you to listen as we read through the rest because uh, two words, this book is is gonna be repeated six times.

This book, this book.

I'll try to emphasize it as I read through it.

But Christ is gonna be saying that he's coming quickly, and he's gonna be saying that three times too.

So, and I, John, verse eight, am the one who heard and saw these things.

In other words, he's an ear and eyewitness.

Uh, he had a firsthand experience here.

Uh, so he is authoritative, he's confident in what he heard and saw.

And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things.

And he said to me, this angel did, do not do that.

I'm a fellow servant of yours and of your brethren, the prophets, and of those who heed the words of this book, worship God.

All right, so this is John just kind of overwhelmed, swept up in the whole thing.

That can happen to us as well.

And what ends up happening is his worship.

He he wants to respond to worship, uh, but he misdirects his worship.

We do that too in our own day and time.

Uh, as a matter of fact, we're constantly creating idols uh in our own hearts.

Some of them are good things, they just aren't meant to be the thing we worship.

They, they, they don't, they, they don't have the ability to bear the weight, really, of the glory of God.

And the they they don't um uh they they can't endure the worship that we give to them, they'll fail us every time.

And so it's important, this angel says, and this is by the way, the second time that's happened here.

Happened in chapter 19 as well.

So he falls down, John does, proper response, just misdirected worship.

All right.

So he he falls down and he worship.

And I like that.

I mean, because he could have fallen down and worried.

He could he could have fallen down and worried, or he could have fell down and gotten out of his calculator and tried to figure it all out, like some of us have in our you know, day and time, or like some down through the the history of the church have done.

But no, instead he falls down to worship.

He doesn't know where to direct it, unfortunately, but the angel helps him and he says, Um, I'm a fellow, I'm like you.

I I'm a I'm a worshiper of God, and that's who we should worship, okay?

So there's the proper object of worship, God and God alone.

All right, that's great.

Verse 10.

And he said to me, Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.

Let the one who does wrong still do wrong, let the one who is filthy still be filthy, let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness, let the one who is holy still keep himself holy.

What is that verse about, verse 11?

Is essentially declarative.

It's essentially saying, people have made their choices.

And there will come a time when God will actually draw a line on human history and say, that's it, right there.

Okay.

And that's essentially, I think, what is being said there in verse 11.

Um, let the one who has set their course in the direction of doing wrong, they're going to continue to do it, John.

You can't stop them.

Uh let those who practice righteousness continue to do that, though.

And the one who is holy, let them continue to keep themselves holy.

And then in red letters in my in my Bible, perhaps in yours as well, verse 12, behold, and again, this is one of my favorite words in the Bible, behold, it's as if uh it's as if they it's as if Jesus is saying, think about this.

Ponder on this, let this blow your mind for just a second or two.

Behold, I am coming quickly.

So there's the second of the three times he says he's gonna be coming again, and he's gonna be coming quickly.

And my reward is with me to render to every man according to what he has done.

So there are rewards.

That doesn't mean that we can earn God's love.

It doesn't mean we can earn salvation.

It just means there are rewards for those at some point in time in the heavenly realm for their works.

And again, they're already going to be there.

They haven't earned salvation.

It's about just a reward for having done uh God's will.

And then verse 13, Jesus says, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

And this is the way the book opened.

Again, these are the bookends.

Jesus saying, I am the first word and I'll have the last word.

I'm the beginning and I'm the end.

And the cool thing about the end in the book of Revelation is that it's an end with a beginning because it's a new beginning.

New heavens, new earth, right?

New Jerusalem, new bodies, new experience in life, no tears, no more sorrow, no more disease, no more death, no more fear, no more acrimony, no more addiction, no more abuse.

Um He sets things right because He has the last word and He's righteous in His judgment.

This is so beautiful.

Blessed.

Here's the last of the Beatitudes in the entire Bible.

Here it is, verse 14.

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter by the gates into the city.

They will they they wash their robes in the blood of Christ.

And uh, you know, the the the New Testament teaches us that he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, so that we might have the righteousness of God in Christ.

And that's indeed what is being described here.

They wash their robes uh in the blood of Christ, and they then are they are then have access to the tree of life, and they can enter the gates into the city.

That's so beautiful.

Don't you want to go there?

Wouldn't you want to be there?

Um place your faith, your hope, and your confidence in Christ and his finished work on the cross.

Um, then your robes will be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Uh he goes on to say, verse 15, we're we're almost done.

Uh outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.

Now, you might sit there and think to yourselves, so there's some outside and some inside, right?

Yeah.

Actually, that's exactly what's being said here.

They're getting exactly what they want, though.

Look at the last line of that verse.

They love and practice lying, as well as all of those other sins.

They're um uh uh immoral, they're they're you know, sorcerers, they're they're diviners, they're worshiping other kinds of gods, if you will, and they're idolaters, um and they love and practice lying.

And of course, the great Satan, um uh depicted here as the great dragon or the great prostitute, this is the father of lies, and so they love the father of lies.

And God is just giving them what they desire.

They love that, he's letting them have that as a way of life on into eternity.

Um, I, Jesus, verse 16, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches.

I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star, and the spirit and the bride say, Come.

And let the one who hears say, Come, and let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.

Those are two of my very favorite words in this chapter, in this book.

They go together so beautifully.

Without cost, folks.

You're invited.

I'm invited.

Well, what do I need to bring?

Do I need my credit card?

No.

Do I need some cash?

No.

What do I need?

Nothing but thirst and hunger.

You just need need.

You just need to know you need him, and what he is offering you is salvation as a free gift, based not on anything you can do, based on anything.

You can't buy it, you can't earn it, you can't be good enough, you can't balance out the moral scales.

This isn't about what you do or I do, this is about what Christ has done, and that's why it's such great news.

You see, because I can't earn it, I can't buy it, and I can't lose it.

You see, it's all based on Christ and in Christ alone.

This is so beautiful.

So, this water for you, if you're thirsty, this water is without cost.

And you say today, well, you don't know how far I have run from God.

And I say, I don't care how far you've run.

Here's what matters which direction are you facing right now?

Would you see repentance is a turning around?

Would you turn around right now?

Because it doesn't matter how far away you are, if you'll just take that one step turning around, if you're 999 steps away from God, He'll take up the 999 steps and run out to meet you.

And you say, Yeah, but I've been angry.

And you say, Yeah, I have I've been broken.

Um and and and I've I've completely disappointed my family, I've completely disappointed my spouse, I've completely disappointed my and broken my own heart because of the way I push other people away all the time.

That invitation is for you as well.

This invitation is universal as an invitation, all right?

So the idea is if you're thirsty, come, he'll give you the water of life.

If you're hungry, come.

He is the bread of life, and he's got the tree of life that's always in bloom, and he's just waiting for you to turn to him.

Oh, this is so beautiful.

What a great, great invitation this is.

Verse 18.

I tested.

To everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book.

There it is.

Wow.

That's the fourth time he said this book.

If anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.

That's the sixth time.

So, folks, this book, whether he's talking about revelation only or whether he's talking about the whole corpus of scripture, the entire body, the entire library of the 66 books that we have, that we call the word of God.

And I tend to lean in that direction.

I think what he is saying here is that God's word is God's word.

You see.

And he has committed it to us, and he wants us to be faithful to it.

And he wants us to submit our lives to his will, to his ways.

And how do we know what his will is?

How do we know what his ways are?

This book.

And that's why we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

All right, we're about to finish.

There's two more verses, and then I want to make a few points and uh we'll wrap this up.

He who testifies to these things says, Yes, I am coming quickly.

There's the third time Jesus says that.

Yes, I am coming quickly.

I am coming soon, some of your English translation translations will say.

One of the commentators said it's as if you're trying to hail a cap in a busy city, and you're going, hey, hey, hey, hey, you know, you're just ready to jump in, get going, and and and press on with the journey.

See?

So there's a certain amount of urgency that's eager anticipation.

And he is excited to come for his bride, you see.

I'm coming and I'm coming soon.

I'm coming quickly.

And then John writes, Amen, come, Lord Jesus.

That's awesome.

Maranatha, I think in the Aramaic it is, come, Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all.

And that's how a letter would end, right?

And so John ends it with this word Amen.

That word means truly.

So in a in a day that is filled with falsehood, in a day when we can't tell what's the reality, uh, because there's so many voices that contradict one another.

Um, here is a true and a faithful word in the middle of all of that.

And I love the way this book ends.

It is so, so powerful.

All right.

Well, at least several things I'm gonna share with you, but first from T.

F.

Glassing.

This chapter to him, he said, is like a triumphant finale to the Bible.

It reminds us of a composer gathering up the themes of a symphony in a closing burst of glorious music.

So, you know, think back to uh, you know, Handel's Messiah or whatever you want.

It's where the themes are reiterated, and throughout the book of Revelation, as I've said before, um, John seems to draw upon his vast knowledge of the rest of the scriptures, including of Paul's writings, including the four gospels.

And he seems to have an understanding for all of those things because he's also reaching all the way back into the Old Testament and referencing or making allusions to those books as well throughout the book of Revelation.

Um, some commentators have suggested that all the other 65 books find some allusion here in the book of Revelation.

So it really is an amazing crescendo and a climactic ending to the book of Revelation.

Three things I want to point out.

Here is uh a chapter, I think, that's about the returning king.

And um uh first, the imminent return of Jesus is certainly on display in verse 7, verse 12, and verse 20.

He has promised to return three times here in this book, uh, if it's if it's a reference to just Revelation, and just this chapter has seven times where he says, this book.

But Jesus is really driving it home in this chapter.

He intends to return, and it's soon.

So the imminent return of Jesus Christ is really important.

And he's as he's writing, remember this all out of context.

The first century readers of John's um uh book here, this revelation of Jesus Christ, they were undergoing a great deal of persecution.

It was increasing, likely under Emperor Domitian, um, the kind of world leader that none of us have ever experienced anything like it.

We all tend to think that our little slice of space-time history is, you know, the most important one in the entire history of the world.

And it's not, I'm sorry.

Um, there are a lot of things that happened during that first century to Christians especially, in terms of persecution that most of us will never experience.

That's not to say there aren't Christians being persecuted in our world and in our day and time.

It's just for most of us in the West, that's not happening.

But we look forward to all of us do, because we know the world is broken, every single one of us, whether we're suffering persecution or just being marginalized or mocked, we we understand that things aren't right in the world and it needs to be set right.

And what we're looking for and longing for is the return of the king, the right king, the righteous king, King Jesus.

When will that happen?

Well, the disciples of Jesus asked Jesus that same question.

And the answer from Jesus was no man knows the day or the hour.

The Apostle Paul uh he actually said when Christ returns, he'll come like a thief in the night.

And by that, he doesn't mean that Jesus is going to break into your house and steal your computer and all your jewelry and all that sort of thing.

No, he meant it will be a surprise.

It won't, you won't expect it.

It'll be a complete surprise.

Why won't you expect it?

Well, it might be that you gave up predicting it, and so you're you're sort of like, I don't know.

And you get just kind of dull and jaded.

And I think that's happened to a lot of church people, a lot of Christians.

And that's why a book like this, for them, they look at it and go, ah, I don't want to, I don't want to study that.

And they miss out on so much.

It's the only book that declares that if you just hear it and heed it, there's this blessing that will come to you.

And so we've I I've so enjoyed uh studying through Revelation together as a church during this season, especially.

Uh, when our slice of space-time history seemed so uh ravaged, uh, you know, this is the year 2020 that everybody just wishes was over, okay, for multiple reasons.

But I I knew, and and the rest of our church leadership knew as we prayed and we sought the Lord and the Holy Spirit just oppressed upon us, we need to set everyone's sights a little higher than this world.

And uh, and so I'm I'm so glad we did that.

And the next book we will study will be the book of Colossians, which too is rich in Christology.

And then at the first of the year, turning the first of the year, we're gonna begin the book of Genesis.

So, you know how when your computer isn't working right and you got to reboot it?

We're rebooting everything and going back to the book of Genesis.

See, what was God up to when he created this universe?

Um, how did he do it?

Um, uh, what what what are his intentions for humanity?

You know, and so Genesis is rich.

So read ahead in both Colossians and Genesis, and I think you'll really enjoy this uh coming few months that we'll be together.

When will the return of Christ be?

Great question, yeah.

Um, I'll stand with Jesus and just say, I I no man knows.

Uh we don't know.

So why burn all that time and energy unless you're just trying to sell books or movie tickets or just trying to sell videos or something?

I why burn all that?

Just be excited about the fact that he's coming and remain vigilant, watching and waiting for his return.

That's very important.

Here's one of the ways the Apostle Paul, writing to one of his young proteges, a man named Titus, said it, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live, I love this, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

And just for a moment, again, consider when the Apostle Paul wrote that in the first century and what was going on in their world.

And basically what he's saying is, you belong to God, you belong to Christ.

No one can take that away from you.

No one can stop you from being his people, no matter what the laws of the land are.

I mean, back then it was a sword to your throat, and you must worship the emperor.

And if you were a person who said Jesus is Lord, you might be put to death.

So in our day and in our time, I would suggest to you, Village Chapel, and all of you who watch this from around the world, wherever you may be, don't stop being the people of God, no matter what your context is.

You belong, your forehead is marked with the name of Jesus.

He's your savior, he's your Lord.

For the grace of God has appeared in the person of Jesus, bringing salvation on offer for all people.

Training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.

That's how we renounce by turning away from our sinfulness and our sinful desires, our dis uh, our misordered priorities, uh, our distracted uh uh desires, all of that stuff.

Turn away from that, turn toward Christ and worship him.

He's our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I also like the way Calvin Miller said this in The Path of Celtic prayer.

Our failure perceives Christ to perceive Christ's imminent return as our blessed hope has contributed to our feelings of separateness from God.

The problem is not so much that we seldom think about his coming, but that we're no longer excited by the prospect.

Oh, oh no.

Now you're starting to meddle with me.

I'm no longer, what do you mean?

We're no, some of us are no longer excited about the prospect of him coming.

But I remember when I was a kid, I would hear people talk about, you know, about the return of the Lord, and I'd go, hmm, I'm young, I haven't got my driver's license, Lord.

Could you just wait until I get my driver's license?

Or could you just wait till I get married?

Or could you just some of you, could you just wait till I have kids, or could you just wait till I finish college or whatever?

There are all these little deals that we try to strike with the Lord so that he would wait, hold off heaven, hold off the new heavens and new earth and the new Jerusalem, because I want to get to do some stuff.

And how silly that was of us.

How how trivial, how shallow of me when I look back on all of this.

The older I get, hmm.

The things of this life and this world do grow strangely dim.

It doesn't mean they're unimportant, it doesn't mean they're unholy, doesn't mean I'm some kind of platonic duelist.

That's not what I'm saying.

It just means in the light of his glory and grace, man.

I'm now with John.

Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Amen and amen.

Yeah.

Secondly, Revelation 22, which is about the returning king, yeah.

It's also about a rightly focused worship.

We saw that in verses eight and nine, didn't we?

It's a second time, like I said, that uh John sets his worship in the wrong direction.

And I do it all the time, and you do too, if we're honest.

So let's take that exhortation from that angel.

Worship God.

Okay.

Let's let's kind of comb through as we reflect a little, you know, uh in prayer, and let's ask the Lord to reveal to us all those things that have so charmed us, that we've sort of put our confidence and hope in, thinking, oh man, if only this happens, or if only that doesn't happen, uh, then everything will be okay.

And you see it, oh, you see it writ large right now.

And and all of the, you know, sort of hurry and worry and anxiety and acrimony uh in an election year.

Are those things important?

Sure, they have their place.

But ultimately, you know, it doesn't matter who's in the state house or the White House.

What really matters is who's on the throne of heaven.

Jesus is much bigger than a donkey or an elephant.

He's the Lamb of God who's taken away the sin of the world, including mine.

And so my eternity is all wrapped up in him.

And I invite you to consider that yourself.

Worship him.

Don't worship anything else.

Every idol that we've wrongly directed our worship at has failed us or is about to fail us.

Okay.

So, like the ancient Israelites, um, we need to keep coming back to Yahweh, to the God of the Bible, to Jesus, his Messiah, uh, our messiah.

And uh and and invite the Holy Spirit, open up and and just ask the Holy Spirit to fill us and to flood us anew with his presence, um, uh and and rightly focus our worship on God.

Thirdly, Christ the hope of glory.

And so, yeah, here we go.

The imminent return of Christ, a rightly focused worship, and Christ the hope of glory.

You see, glory is the eternal luminous splendor of God.

This is not merely the hope of achieving or acquiring something finite or temporal.

Uh, this is not just uh merely the hope of just sort of spiritual warm fuzzies.

Um, this is not uh uh some kind of experience that some kind of ecstatic experience that we hope to achieve that will be gone in about an hour and a half.

Remember when I was a kid, I used to go to camp all the time.

And man, we came back from church camp on a high, man.

Everybody was like at the end of church camp at the campfire, man, arm in arm, just swaying together.

We are the church.

And we were doing that and just so caught up in the emotions of it, see.

Um, but that fades.

And what is on offer here is an unfading glory of Jesus Christ.

And that's our hope, you see.

That's our hope.

All those other lesser glories in the earthly realm, you know, whether you're talking about like sports, you know, winning state competitions and high school conference titles in college, uh uh World Series, Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, I don't care, NBA championships, all that stuff.

And their glories in other fields too: academics, um uh politics, of course, uh resolving international conflict, achieving financial success, all those glories, right?

They have their moments, but none of them are eternal.

All right.

None can save our souls.

None of them can promise to make all things new.

And folks, that is what is on offer here.

The hope of our glory for us, Jesus, the returning king.

So we will experience God's glory in its fullness when he returns to set things right, to dwell among us in a more full, permanent kind of way.

And with that in mind, even here in this broken world, we can live in the overflow of inextinguishable hope.

Because we believe his promise to come back and return, his imminent return, as we saw here three times in this chapter.

And T.

Wright says this for God to judge the world meant that he would, in the end, put it all to rights, straighten um uh it out, producing not just a sigh of relief all around, but shouting for joy from the trees and the fields, the seas, and the floods.

Amen and amen.

That's right.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a 18th and 19th century um English poet, philosopher, and theologian.

Some of you may have heard of him.

He was a friend of uh William Wordsworth.

Um, they were both considered founders of what was called the uh uh the romantic movement in in uh England.

And um Dr.

Malcolm Geite, who is uh a man I've I've I've just gotten to know a little bit, and then I'll be doing uh uh one of our Friday night chats with him on the on the Psalms because he's a poet himself, brilliant poet.

Uh as a matter of fact, his Twitter handle handle uh description, I think, says he's a a priest, a poet, a rock and roller, and the chaplain of uh of uh Gerton College at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Anyway, he writes this in his book, Why Poetic Imagination is Necessary to Understand Biblical Prophecy.

In the prophetic writings of Scripture, and especially in the coming of Christ, the veil is lifted, lifted not only from the world, but also from our own hearts.

We encounter not only what Chesterton called the buried sunrise of wonder, but also the long-veiled image of God in all his beauty, truth, and goodness.

I don't know about you, but I'm in on that.

I'm ready for that.

And I pray the Lord will give me a greater poetic imagination.

Um, I'm much more of an analytical, theoretical guy.

Maybe you are too.

All right.

But don't think you're supposed to stay stuck in that.

And if you're all poetic and all, you know, it's all to you, all just warm fuzzies and feelings, you might need to come more back to the reason side.

But here's the beauty: the Bible is overflowing with God revealing himself to all kinds of personality types and to all kinds of ways of thinking and perceiving.

And so we have the Psalter, the Psalms, which I'll look forward to having that conversation with Malcolm on.

Um, but we also have books that are historical narrative, and we also have apocalyptic literature, prophetic literature like this that just presents us with these shocking images and these signs and symbols and the sequence of the end times and all that stuff.

But none of that, all of that pales as it points to the point, Jesus, the one who's coming back.

And we want to set our sight on that.

C.S.

Lewis at the end of um The Last Battle, which is the last book in the uh uh Chronicles of Norne.

Matter of fact, I'm gonna reach over here and grab my copy.

This is it.

Kim and I have been uh uh reading these aloud, it's like we're a couple kids again.

But since we've got you know so much quarantine time on our hands, we can read some things together.

But, you know, I love the way this book ends, The Last Battle, because it sure sounds like a commentary on the book of Revelation.

I'll put it up on the screen for you.

It's gonna take a couple slides.

It goes like this.

The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.

And for us, this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story.

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page.

Now at last, they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.

See, that just sounds like a commentary on Revelation, doesn't it?

Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come and save us, Lord.

Come, we are broken, we are thirsty.

Come, Lord, we are hungry for you.

Oh Lord, we're longing for you.

Come, save your people, Lord Jesus.

Michael Wilcox, one of my favorite commentators on the book of Revelation.

I'll close with this uh quote by him.

With a curse removed by Christ, the new creation will eventually be what it was meant to be.

The throne at the center of it all, and the people of God seeing him, serving him, sealed by his name, and reigning with him in everlasting day.

See, Revelation, folks, is the pledge of God's love toward broken sinners like me and like you.

Jesus has given it to us, this book, this revelation, if you will, to awaken us spiritually, not only by the mind, but also by the imagination, to quicken our pulse, to set our souls aflame for the hope of glory in Christ, which all too often we've taken for granted.

Are you thirsty for this water?

Do you hunger for this kind of fruit?

Do you desire to be included in this glorious salvation and to live forever in the city of God?

How will you respond to Jesus?

The curse has been removed by Christ.

May I encourage you to trust in him.

He's the Lamb who was slain, who is risen again, and he will reign forever and ever.

Amen.