Come

Good morning, especially if you're visiting or new here for the first time, good morning.

I'm Tommy.

I'm one of the pastors here.

This is an exciting morning.

It's a beautiful morning, but I'm particularly excited because we are coming to the end of

a series that we started all the way back just after Easter, looking at this very mysterious,

fascinating, beautiful, at times frustrating book, the last book of the Bible called Revelation.

Revelation, or the Revelation of St. John, or the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

And we are in the final chapter of the book of Revelation.

So this is it, the last chapter.

And I'm very excited.

It's been an amazing journey.

As we have said time and time again, this is a book that most people are familiar with,

and yet very few people really understand.

It's gotten a lot of attention in pop culture from the inspiration of the Left Behind series

to speculations about the precise timing and dating of the end time to speculations over

who the Antichrist might be.

All of these things have captured popular imagination.

So what's this book actually about?

That's what we've been looking at.

John is writing to Christians in the first century.

And the people that John wrote this book to have faced suffering.

They have faced horrendous persecution.

They are people who feel hopeless and powerless.

And at the time that John is writing this, he is in exile on the prison island of Patmos.

And so that's the context.

And this book seems outlandish to us because it has all kinds of crazy images of the heavens opening up

and dragons and beasts coming up out of the sea and stars falling out of the sky.

So when we read it from our vantage point, it seems like wild stuff.

And yet what we have hopefully realized is that if we were first century Christians

and we were immersed in the Jewish Scriptures as they undoubtedly would have been,

we would immediately recognize that Revelation makes reference to virtually every book in the Old Testament.

Almost the entire Old Testament canon shows up in the book of Revelation.

And here's what's so amazing.

John is not simply quoting the Old Testament.

He is reinterpreting all of Scripture through the lens of Jesus Christ.

One of the things that Revelation shows us is that the life of Jesus is the exegesis of the Old Testament.

So everything that happens, the entire story of the Old Testament is told through the lens of Jesus Christ.

And so Revelation, because John is first and foremost a pastor and a poet,

his approach is to aim at our hearts and our imaginations.

And so every chapter brings wave after wave of Christ-saturated imagery

crashing on the shores of our imagination.

John is retelling the story of God's people again and again and again with each successive wave,

a new retelling of our story,

because he's laying out a vision of what was and what is and what is to come.

And the purpose of this entire book is to show us the way things really are,

to pull back the veil and allow us to see reality for what it is.

He uses the extraordinary to reveal the ordinary

and enable us to see it as it's meant to be seen.

So this book is meant to teach us how to see, you know, to truly see ourselves, one another,

the world, and especially God, as revealed in Jesus Christ.

And so what we're going to do now is we're going to look at chapter 22,

but seeing as how we've just spent months looking at all of the preceding chapters,

we're going to pull some of that in as well.

So what I want to do is to briefly draw out seven, which is very appropriate for Revelation,

seven major themes that we have seen over the course of this study.

And then once we've done that very briefly, we're going to ask the most important question.

Anytime we're looking at Scripture, the most important question, so what?

What difference does this make?

What do we do with this information that we've been given?

So let's pray, and then we'll dive into God's Word.

Lord, we thank you for your Word, and we thank you for the times when it is clear and straightforward.

But we also thank you for the times when it seems obscure or hard to understand or unclear,

because we know those times remind us that our only hope,

our only hope of really seeing what you want us to see and hearing what you want us to hear

is if your Holy Spirit makes that possible.

So Lord, we hold out our hands.

We depend on you.

We cry out to you to be the God who fulfills your promise to speak and to be in our midst

and to bring us face to face with the living Word, Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name that we pray.

Amen.

So seven themes that we have seen over the course of this study.

So if this is your first time with us, you'll get a little bit of a review.

And if you want to go back and listen to the sermons, you can do that on our website.

But for now, the first theme that I want to talk about briefly is the theme of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

In the opening chapter, we see Jesus as he truly is.

We see the risen Christ.

And what's so striking about this is he's no longer the meek, soft-spoken Galilean

that we have so many paintings of in church basements.

He's a towering and fearsome king.

In Revelation, he is a towering and fearsome king, awesome to behold,

the Lion of Judah who refuses to be domesticated.

And right off the bat, John sets the tone, this is a very different Jesus,

not in his heart or in his character, but in his role.

He is no longer the suffering servant.

He's taken the throne.

And because of that, the message to us is this, that no matter what your life may look like,

no matter how out of control or random it may seem, Jesus is always in control.

He's always in control because he sits on the throne.

So it reveals Jesus as he truly is.

The next thing we see in Revelation is that it inspires...

There's craziness happening up here.

It inspires our worship.

Revelation inspires our worship.

There's this amazing place in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation where John is disoriented.

He's suffering.

He's in exile.

And God reorients him, not by giving him lots of explanations and answers and spreadsheets,

but by inviting him to a heavenly worship service,

showing us that the purpose of worship, one of the main reasons we gather here,

is to be reoriented around what truly matters, the throne of God.

And it shows us that every time Christians gather, whether it's thousands in a megachurch

or just a few men and women around a kitchen table,

we are joining in to eternal heavenly worship where all things are centered around the throne of God.

So it inspires our worship.

That's what's happening right now.

We're joining in to something that's always happening in the heavenly sanctuary.

The next thing we see in Revelation is Revelation shows us how Jesus sees the church.

Right?

Chapters 2 and 3, we see these letters that Jesus writes to his church.

And it's amazing to see Jesus' perspective on us.

And here's what matters about that.

Jesus knows better than we do how broken, how imperfect the church is.

He knows better than we do how flawed the church is.

Right?

And no matter how much you think you might have been hurt by the church,

and I say that with an enormous amount of respect because I know a fair number of you have been hurt by the church.

And that's real pain.

And there are a lot of people out there who would never darken the door of our church

because they've been hurt by some other church somewhere, the church.

No matter how bad we may have been hurt by the church, Jesus has been hurt worse.

And yet what we see in Revelation is that Jesus loves his church as his bride.

He is eternally committed to his church.

He gives his life for his church.

And he will not stop until his church is fully restored, perfected, beautified, and made whole.

And I look at this who had my own struggles with the church, believe it or not.

And I say, well, if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

So it shows us how Jesus views the church.

Revelation also exposes the true nature of evil, which is very important in this day and time.

It shows us images of the dragon or the beasts.

And it reminds us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

So the true battle that needs to be fought is not ideological.

It's not sociological.

It's not political.

Even though those feel like the ultimate battles, the true battle is none of those things.

The true battle being fought is a spiritual battle against spiritual evil, spiritual enemies.

And that kind of battle has to be fought with spiritual weapons like prayer and the Word of God.

We could spend a lot of time on that, but something just to think about.

We need to fight fewer battles online and more battles on our knees.

If we really understand the nature of evil.

The fifth thing that we see in Revelation is Revelation announces the good news of God's judgment.

Which I know is a funny way to phrase it.

But when you read Revelation, you see why God's coming judgment is actually such good news for the world.

God's coming judgment confirms that sneaking suspicion we all have that our actions actually matter.

That there is such a thing out there as right and wrong.

But beyond that, the coming judgment of God means that God loves the world so much that He can't turn a blind eye to evil.

He can't look, for instance, at the genocide in Rwanda.

A country tearing itself apart.

And just shrug it off.

God's love.

God's love compels Him to bring justice.

God's love compels Him to respond.

And Revelation promises us that one day justice is going to be done.

One day victims are going to be vindicated.

One day creation will be renewed.

So it's good news.

The sixth theme we see in Revelation is that it emboldens the church's witness.

It emboldens our witness in the world.

One of the strongest themes in Revelation is the role of the church.

And again and again and again, we are referred to as martyrs.

And the word martyr originally simply meant to bear witness.

But because so many Christians were killed for bearing witness, we've come to associate that word with dying.

And Revelation pulls all of those themes together.

You're called to bear witness and very possibly that will cost you your reputation, your job, or your life.

It will bring lots of discomfort into your daily experience.

But what we recognize is that if Christ is coming to judge and renew the world, we should stop at nothing to make the gospel known to everyone, everywhere.

We talked about the various views of eschatology.

And we don't have time to get into that now.

But the various Christian views on the end times.

And one of the things we said at the end was, regardless of your view, one thing is clear.

We need to be proclaiming the gospel to anyone who will listen.

The good news that Jesus has come and what he has done for us.

Right?

And then the seventh theme that we see is that Revelation promises the victory of Christ over suffering and evil and death.

We started this church in the neighborhood Columbia Heights.

God willing, if we're able to buy a building, we may end up there again.

But we started this church there.

And I don't know if you read a few days ago, there was a shooting in Columbia Heights.

Several people were injured.

One person was killed.

We should grieve that.

We should stand in solidarity with the people who are suffering as a result of the violence in our city.

And yet we do that with hope because we know if Revelation is true, one day Jesus himself will wipe away the tears shed over that violence.

And one day violence like that will be no more.

Zechariah's description of the New Jerusalem is of a city where the streets are filled with the sounds of children playing.

It's safe.

It is secure.

It is peaceful.

It's a great place to live.

It's a great place to grow up.

Right?

So these are themes we could talk about so much more.

But these are, I think, some of the major themes that we focused on over the course of our time together.

So Revelation 22 brings all of this together and it asks the $64,000 question.

John is saying, now that you've seen behind the curtain, now that you've seen things as they really are, what are you going to do with that knowledge?

What are you going to do with it?

In John's mind, the worst thing we could do, the worst thing we do would be to tamper with this.

He makes it very clear.

Don't add anything to it.

Don't take away anything from it.

Verses 18 and 19, don't touch it.

And, of course, you know, this helps us understand that even though there was a lot more context and things may have made more sense in certain ways,

it was no easier for God's people to read God's Word in the first century than it is in our century.

In other words, there are always things that are going to be comforting and inspiring and uplifting and encouraging

and things that are going to be downright challenging and offensive and frustrating and troubling.

And there's always a temptation to add or subtract, to say, if I could just clarify this part,

or if I could just cut this part out, then I could believe it.

If I could just skip over this place, then I could believe it.

John's saying, no, no, no, don't touch it.

Why?

Well, if you believe in an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent creator being who brought all of this into existence,

and that being so happens to agree with you on every issue,

that being is probably a figment of your imagination.

If you're dealing with a real God who really made all of this,

chances are that God is going to have certain positions that you find challenging.

But John says, are you interested in knowing the God that you made up, that you created in your image,

or do you want to have a chance at knowing the God who made you in his image?

Don't touch it.

The worst thing we could do would be to tamper.

The second worst thing we could do, this is what we'll spend the remainder of our time on,

would be to read this and then to say, well, you know, that was very interesting.

What's next?

Interesting study, interesting book, interesting points, things to think about.

What's next?

John wants us to see, and he wants us to see things as they really are.

And he writes chapter 22 with this sense of urgency, right?

This book was written for a purpose.

John is hoping for and actually calling out of us a response.

What are you going to do with this?

You know, some things, once you see them, you can't unsee them.

Some things demand a response.

And C.S. Lewis famously said,

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen.

Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

And John wants us to take that approach with Revelation.

By it I now see everything else.

And that's why the divine messenger in chapter 22 comes to John,

and he says, these words are trustworthy and true.

And then he says,

Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.

And by keep, what this messenger means is,

allow this book to help frame and make sense of our lives, past, present, and future.

In other words, map our lives onto these themes.

Because this is what human beings do.

We live life, and we have brains that are hardwired to make meaning out of our experiences.

And John says, when you go to make meaning out of your experiences,

this is where you should go.

So what does that look like in our past, present, and future?

With the time we have left, we'll look briefly at each of those.

So I'll ask you this question first.

When you look back in your life, what do you see?

In other words, is your life just random and meaningless?

Is it just disconnected events with moments of serendipity here and there?

Or can you see a thread?

Can you see divine fingerprints?

Can you recognize the sovereign presence of God in your story?

Because this shows us that no matter how it might seem,

Jesus is always in control.

You know, 20 years ago, Laura and I had a plan.

I had, I, we recruited some friends,

and I wanted to go across country in the car.

I wanted to move out to Seattle.

I had a job lined up.

We had some friends going out.

We were going to have a couple of houses of people we knew.

And I wanted to build a life there.

I was Seattle bound.

I was hoping to get into university out there

and get a PhD in psychology.

And this was my post-grad plan.

And we're driving, and we made it as far as Iowa,

and we had a horrendous accident.

And we lost control of our suburban,

which was loaded with everything we owned.

And we rolled three times into a cornfield.

All the glass was shattered.

All of our stuff shot out of the car like popcorn.

It just went all over the highway, all over everything.

So all of our clothes, you know, electronics, all of that,

getting smashed by cars on the highway

as everybody's coming to a halt.

You know, highway patrol came.

People assumed we were dead.

We miraculously survived, Laura and I,

and then my friend who was asleep in the back seat.

I've never really felt like I could ever make that up to him.

I'm so sorry you woke up as the car was rolling into a cornfield.

That's not a good way to wake up.

I don't think you can fall asleep in cars anymore.

And I felt horrible about that.

But we had this horrible accident.

The car was totaled.

We lost all of our, most everything we owned was destroyed,

covered in mud, torn apart.

It took what remaining money we had to get back to North Carolina.

Suffice to say, I never made it out to Seattle.

And I was deeply depressed that summer

because life felt meaningless.

And worse, it felt like I had meaning,

but life had then been derailed.

I don't know if you feel like that,

that you're going along,

and at some point you feel like you're kind of on track,

and then at some point you look back and you say,

I think I got derailed somewhere.

And you sort of feel like your life does not look like

what you thought it would look like,

like maybe God was doing this,

but you weren't listening,

or maybe there is no God,

maybe God doesn't care about you,

and you're just sort of like wandering in the wilderness.

That's how I felt.

And I had no idea what I was going to do,

and I was deeply, deeply, deeply depressed.

I think I even was on antidepressants.

Just I couldn't, I could hardly get out of bed.

But because I was in North Carolina,

instead of Washington State,

my pastor convinced me,

against my better judgment,

to go to,

to take part in a ministry internship

that was being started at our church.

And I said,

well, I don't want to go into ministry.

Why would I do this?

And he said,

what else are you doing?

I mean, that's pretty good.

I was like,

okay,

you got me.

So I started doing this ministry internship.

They had me serving

and trying to teach

and love middle school kids in our church.

And I had been a Christian about a year.

So I had no idea what I was doing.

But because of this ministry internship,

that actually led me to decide to go to seminary

because I loved it so much

that I thought I'd go to seminary.

And so a few years later,

I go to seminary,

which never otherwise would have happened.

And because I went to seminary,

I discovered the Anglican tradition

and fell in love with it.

And the Anglican tradition

led me to come to Washington, D.C.

And that's what led me to begin meeting

with a group of a couple of dozen men and women

in a little house in Columbia Heights

on Friday nights.

And those meetings then gave rise

to the church that became Church of the Advent.

And if you think of Church of the Advent,

if you think of all the people

who have come to faith here,

all of the people

who have been strengthened in their faith here,

all of the friendships that have been formed here,

all of the married couples who met here,

all of the children who were born

as a result of those marriages in this church,

if you think about all that,

praise God for that wreck.

And praise God,

praise God,

praise God that I am not in control.

And praise God that things sometimes

have to get utterly derailed

because what's happening is

is that I'm on the wrong rail.

And God says,

no, no, no, I want you over here.

And praise the Lord

that we get to be together as a family this morning

as a result of the fact that Jesus is in control.

Right, so when you look back,

is it just random and meaningless

or do you see some thread that maybe God is there

and maybe Jesus is in control

and maybe good things and bad things

and random things are happening

and yet somehow it makes sense

in the divine mind of God?

Is that possible?

Look at the present in your life,

this moment right here.

Right, when we all think about things

that we most care about in this church,

right, when we think about racial tension,

we look around this church

and we realize how racially divided

the church still is,

especially in Washington, D.C.

And we grieve that.

Right, when we look at the political division,

when we look at school shootings,

you know, is this all just human evil

or is this, as revelation reveals to us,

symptomatic of deeper underlying spiritual forces?

You know, when we look at our own hearts,

when you look at your own insecurities

or struggles that you're sitting with right now,

the things that are needling away at you,

the things that when you lay down at night

and it's dark and you can't sleep,

the things that come into your mind,

what is that?

What are you thinking or feeling

in the early hours of the morning?

What haunts you?

Whatever that is,

how do we make sense of it?

Is it just that we need to read some self-help?

Is it just that we need to dig deeper

into our Enneagram type?

Is it just that we need a little counseling?

Now, all of those things are good,

minus the self-help.

Counseling is great.

You know I love the Enneagram.

Enneagram.

But is there more to it?

Is there something real and malignant

at work in our lives?

When I look at the things that I value most,

the things that cause me to say

and do things that aren't me,

right?

You know,

is it possible that we allow good things

to become ultimate things in our lives?

Is it possible

that maybe what the Bible says

about idolatry is true

and that we can take things like success

or comfort or approval

or our own kids

or our ideals about marriage

and enthrone them,

allow them to become idols that we worship?

We say,

unless I have that,

my life is not worth living.

Twice in Revelation,

including here in chapter 22,

John sees an angel

and then what does John do?

He sees the messenger of God

and then he falls on his face

to worship the angel as God.

And it's amazing,

as soon as John does it,

the angel rebukes him.

The angel says,

you must not do that.

I'm a fellow servant

with you and your brothers,

the prophets,

and with those who keep the words

of this book.

And then he says,

worship God,

not me.

Get up off your feet.

This is a great picture

of the human condition.

This is a room full of smart,

well-educated,

sophisticated people.

We have minds that are full of knowledge

and we're highly educated

and we have gullible hearts.

Wise, well-educated,

even cynical minds,

gullible hearts.

I'll go after anything

if it even half promises me

a good life.

Right, so this is what Revelation

shows us about the present.

Now, lastly,

just let's take a couple of minutes

and look at the future.

How do we see our future?

What matters as we look into the future?

What are the things

that we're focused on?

One of the things

that happened to me

soon after I moved to D.C.

is I was in Columbia Heights

and I was at the metro station

at Columbia Heights

and I wanted to take the metro

down to Navy Yard.

And I wasn't really paying attention

and so I just jumped

on the first train I saw.

And as I'm going down,

I realize I'm heading south,

good,

and I'm seeing all the right stops.

I'm seeing, you know,

stops like U Street

and Mount Vernon

and Archives

and I'm like,

okay, I'm headed

in the right direction.

But then something

really weird happened.

Then I'm seeing daylight

and then I'm looking down

and I'm going over

the Potomac River

and I'm leaving,

I'm looking,

I'm like,

we're leaving the city.

And I start looking around

and then I start seeing

these bizarre stops

like Pentagon

and Pentagon City

and Crystal City.

It was terrifying.

And it turns out

what had happened

is that I had gotten

on a yellow line car

instead of a green line car

and it seemed fine

at first.

It seemed like we were headed

in the right direction

but at some point

the tracks diverged

and I ended up

in a very different place

than I expected.

And I think that

one of the things

that Revelation shows us

is that all of this,

all of life,

is going somewhere.

All of history

is progressing inexorably

somewhere.

Right?

And right now

we're all moving

through history together.

We're all together

and it doesn't really

seem like it matters much

what we believe.

It really,

that's a matter

of personal preference.

Most people are not

really paying attention.

But John's trying

to wake us up

to the fact that

one day the tracks

are going to diverge.

And if we're not

paying attention

we might end up

in Northern Virginia.

Just kidding.

If we're not

paying attention

we may end up

in a place

that we don't want to be.

The image

Send all emails

to admin

at adventdc.org

The image

of the end

that we really need

to focus on

is of this great city.

The New Jerusalem.

And the New Jerusalem

is breathtaking.

It's illuminated

by the glory

of God Himself.

The streets

are filled

with the sounds

of children playing

of laughter

and singing.

The tree of life

stands in the center

with leaves

for the healing

of the nations.

A river of life

is flowing

where you can come

and drink

without price

as much as you want.

And verse 14 says

Blessed are those

who wash their robes

so that they may

have the right

to the tree of life

and that they may

enter the city

by the gates.

And this is making clear

that anyone

and everyone

who desires

to have their robes washed

who desires

to be cleansed

of all of their sin

everyone who knows

they need the mercy

of God.

Everyone who's willing

to come to God

and say

I don't have it.

I can't earn this.

I can't repay this.

I'm simply asking you

to give it to me

out of the goodness

of your heart.

Everybody who's willing

to do that

is welcomed

into the city.

And here's the thing

that's striking

about this image.

In the previous chapter

it tells us

the gates of the city

are never shut.

The gates of the city

stand open.

There's never a point

at which the door

is slammed.

The gates of the city

remain open

and yet there are

still people outside.

They're outside the city.

At some point

they thought

they were moving

in the right direction

and then at some point

the track went

in a different direction

and at some point

they realized

they were not going

into the city

they were going

outside of the city.

And we see

that these are

all of the people

who refuse to admit

they need to be washed.

These are people

who refuse

to accept mercy.

People who hold

on to their pride.

People who

as it says

hold on to falsehood.

I prefer this way

of seeing reality

not this way

of seeing reality.

I prefer my take.

People who are demanding

what they believe

they're owed.

You know

I read this passage

and I can't help

but think

of the prodigal son.

You know

the ending

that we read

a little while ago.

At the end

of the story

the younger brother

is

you know

the prodigal son

has washed his robe.

You know

he comes to his father

he falls on his knees

and he says

I've sinned against God

and against you.

I'm not even worthy

to be a servant

in your house.

And the father

before he could even

get the words out

wraps his arm around him.

The father who

when he saw him coming

ran in a very

undignified way

down the road

to embrace his son

before his son

can even utter a word

he's wrapped his arms

around his son.

He's drawn him

to himself

and this son

who slapped him

in the face

who gave him

one of the gravest

insults possible

in the ancient world

who took his inheritance

and basically said

to his father

I wish you were dead.

Give me what I'm owed.

When his son

comes back

he wraps his arm

around him

he puts a ring

on his finger

and a robe

around his shoulders

saying

you're right

you'll not be

a servant

in my house

you'll be a son.

And he throws him

a lavish feast.

And the elder brother

at the end of the story

the real point of the story

is standing outside

the party.

There's a great feast

going on inside

the doors are open

the elder brother

is outside

and the father

comes out

to the elder brother

and he

it says

entreats him

he begs him

to come into the party

but the older brother

remains outside

and he's refusing

to go in

because he believes

that because he has

lived such a good life

because he's been faithful

he's owed something.

Give me what I'm owed

father

give me what I deserve

God

and he remains outside

because of his pride.

So all of history

our past

present

and future

all of history

is moving

inexorably

toward this

final scene.

So I think

here is the message

of revelation

to the world.

If we could summarize

all of this

in one sentence

one day soon

Jesus

is going to come

to us.

That's the final cry

come Lord Jesus.

And so now

is the time

for us

to come

to him.

Let's pray.

Lord we thank you

we thank you

for your word

and we thank you

for your son

and we thank you

for your spirit

and we ask

that that spirit

would now

parse

our words

out from yours

and do what you will

with this offering.

That as we

will see

with the bread

and the wine

in a little while

you would take

these words

and bless them

and break

them

and then

give them to us

as

you see fit

in your son's name.

Amen.

God bless

and созд

you

and