Grace to You and Then Peace - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Church, don't miss this.

You are beloved.

And you are loved.

Christ went to the cross for you.

If you were the only person on the face of the earth, you would have gone to the cross for you.

I'm merited favor.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

So if you were not here with us last week, we went through an outline of the book of Revelation, and I took you through sort of a flyover of the book of Revelation.

This book is a book that is steeped in mystery.

It's one of those books that is often misunderstood, often looked at from one vantage point or from a different dimension or another.

We're going to try to take in a number of these dimensions as we go through it.

We'll be in the book of Revelation for the next year.

And this is a book about the end times.

This is a book about heaven and hell.

This is a book of really confusing signs at times.

It's a book that speaks of a present reality, and we'll talk about this more tonight, but also it talks about the past and it talks about the future.

So it's a really, really interesting book.

And it was a book given by Jesus Christ of the revelation of Jesus Christ to John, who's the last of the Lamb's 12.

So he's the only one still alive on the earth.

This is probably around, we believe, somewhere between 94, 95, or 96 A.D., right in that time frame.

And all the other apostles have been martyred for their faith.

And so John has been cast out to this little island, which is still there, the island of Patmos, 13 square miles, the island of Patmos.

And it's one of the most idyllic, beautiful places in all of the world today, but it was not back then.

It was a prison colony, like my beloved state of Georgia when our country was established, was a prison of state.

I don't know if you knew that.

And so fortunately, none of my ancestors come from Georgia.

I'm the only one who is born and raised in Georgia in my line.

So I do not come from a long line of prisoners.

But he's on the island of Patmos because that's where Domitian has sent prisoners who were against the state.

So he is there.

It's a volcanic island.

Tradition says that he was in a cave.

And you can go to that cave today.

You can go to what they call the Revelation Cave, John's Revelation Cave, where they believe this vision occurred with the Lord coming to him.

But the main point, don't miss this, the main point, and the reason I like this word apocalypse, the main point of revelation, it is an unveiling of the majesty and the glory and the beauty of Jesus Christ.

From beginning to end, we are going to see the beautiful and powerful Lamb of God becoming the Lion of Judah.

If I was a songwriter and I'm not, I would go and I would write profusely from the book of Revelation.

Because the book of Revelation gives us this vision of the beauty of Jesus like no other book of the Bible.

And so if you're struggling and if you're going through difficult times in your life, you are at the right place because there's no other book of the Bible that is written to the overcomer.

To build faith in you and to give you hope for the future and to believe that what you're presently going through, the great lion of Judah is going to come and he's going to give anointing and he's going to show up in mighty and powerful ways.

So let's just review where we were.

Revelation 1, the first part, verse 1.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly or suddenly or quickly take place.

So the word revelation is where we get the word apocalypse or apocalypsis is the Greek word here.

It means unveiling of a mystery.

It's the idea of the covers, the uncovering of something that's been covered.

It's the idea of revealing a mystery that hasn't been known in the past.

So get this, men and women, that this was revelatory.

This was an apocalypse for the first century church of something not that was going to shortly take place, as we might think of chronological chronos, but more kairos, this idea of something, some events that are going to begin to happen that we're going to have insight into that are going to happen rapidly.

When it begins to happen, it's going to happen quickly.

And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.

So it's the only book of the Bible that promises a blessing.

Now you always get a blessing when you read God's word, no doubt.

But seven times in the book of the Apocalypse of John, the revelation of John, he speaks of a blessing to those who read it.

And yet so many of us are frightened by the book of Revelation, are we not?

And yet he promises a blessing.

And here's what he says: He says, here's the blessing.

The blessing is those who read it, hear it, and obey it.

Three things in this verse.

So men and women, he is writing to the church.

He is writing to those who are in the church who will hear, it's an encyclical letter.

So you didn't have books yet.

You had scrolls at that time.

There was no Gutenberg Press yet.

And so this letter was going to go around to the churches in Asia Minor and be read.

And he's saying, if you read it, if you hear it, and then if you obey it, you're going to be blessed.

So we're going to get a blessing this year.

Isn't that exciting?

We are going to be blessed by hearing it, reading it, and experiencing it in our lives.

Verse 4.

John to the seven churches which are in Asia.

So John, as I said before, is the last of the apostles.

But when he says Asia, he's not speaking of the Asia that we think of geographically today, but he was writing to a Roman proconsular province named Asia, which would be Western Turkey today.

So he's speaking of a particular area of Western Turkey today, but why not all the other churches?

This has baffled theologians and commentators for centuries.

Why isn't it written to the Roman church, which we'll find out in the weeks ahead, it's not written to the Roman Church?

Why isn't it written to the Eastern Church, the Church in Jerusalem?

It's not written to the church in Jerusalem.

Why isn't it written to the major, which we believe at that time, were the major churches among the scattered diaspora, the Christians of that time, and we believe that these seven churches that we're going to study speak of churches of all time, the churches all through history.

In other words, when we get into each one of these churches, these seven churches, there's going to be something true about that church that's for us.

There'll be something true about each one of those seven churches that's true of the church in Colorado Springs.

Now we have like 300 churches in Colorado Springs.

So which church?

All of them.

To a certain extent.

All of us will not be able to relate to everything in the church at Ephesus or the church at Pergamum.

But there'll be aspects of that church that relate to us that we can learn from.

So I believe that these seven churches, by the supernatural power of God working through the revelatory nature of what John heard, speak of churches throughout history.

And so here's what's cool: this is a letter written to seven churches.

This is a letter written to us.

And it works.

It works to us just as much as it did in the first century, if not more so, because we have retrospect.

We have history now guiding us to see the particulars of the growth of the church and the struggles of the church.

And so, you know, I know people here at the road that have said this to me.

And all through my Christian life, I've heard this.

When I was in Japan, I heard this.

You know, I, you know, I love Jesus.

Jesus is, you know, he's just all right with me.

And I dig Jesus and everything, but I'm really not into the church thing.

You know, church is they're nasty places.

And they have boards and stuff.

And, you know, I'm just really into Jesus, and I just read my Bible and I and I spend time with the Lord in my boat.

I spend time with the Lord on the river, you know, and that's that's my that's my church.

The problem is, it is not biblical.

And uh, and every book, every book of the New Testament, except for Philemon, is written to a church.

And the book of Revelation is written to seven churches.

And so the assumption at that time is if you were a believer, you were in a church.

And that meant you attended it.

You didn't watch the streaming, you actually came to that church, and you were part of a fellowship of believers, and you were not a believer if you didn't go to church.

Now, talk about heresy in America today.

If you're not in church, you're going to hell.

Now, in the first century, they would have believed that.

And so this is this is written to seven churches.

This is written to you.

You're sitting here.

This is the book for you.

Isn't that awesome?

By the way, you can still be a believer and not come to church.

Okay?

But listen, when you're born again, you become a member of the church.

The moment you get saved, you become a member of the church.

The universal church.

You're in the church, you're a member of the church.

The road did not go to Calvary and die for you.

Jesus did.

So we come together because of the blessing of being together.

We're going to take communion tonight.

We take communion every time we come together.

And when you read 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, and they're talking about communion, they're speaking of taking it properly such that you receive a blessing by that.

So I don't understand it all, men and women.

It is a mystery to me.

But I was in the church nine months before I was born, so I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

But what I've learned through the years is by being in the body, there's a blessing.

There's something that happens mystically.

And when the word is taught properly, when the sacraments are administered biblically and properly, something happens in your soul.

Something that seals your salvation.

I don't get it.

Because I didn't think it up.

It was his idea.

And so it's written to seven churches.

And then he says this he says, Grace to you and peace from him.

Now this is a remarkable statement.

Because this book has some of the most striking images of heaven and hell.

This book gives us the most clear picture of the false prophet and the Antichrist in the latter days of anywhere else in Scripture.

This book of the Bible speaks of a beast coming out of the sea.

It speaks of seals being opened of some of the most gross and the most horrendous and hideous, dramatic judgments ever to hit the face of the earth.

And yet he says, Grace and peace to you to start.

Grace and peace.

Nero, in 67 A.D., one of the great and most horrendous despot emperors Rome ever had.

Most believe that he was actually mentally deranged, caught part of Rome on fire.

And the reason he did that was to blame it on the Christians.

And so that began a huge persecution in 67 A.D.

in Rome, where Christians began to get to be scattered because of the persecution that followed.

In 70 A.D., Titus came into his armies, came to Jerusalem and sacked Jerusalem and totally destroyed the city of Jerusalem.

And the temple's never been rebuilt after he destroyed it.

Then Nero died, and Domitian took over.

And Domitian's in power now.

And at this point of this writing, the Christians are in the catacombs.

Have you heard of the catacombs?

The catacombs in Rome.

So they're underground.

I've been to the catacombs.

You go into the catacombs and you can see images that have been that have been etched into the walls underneath the ground of baptisms.

You can see about baptisms.

And I believe in believers' baptism.

So I'm not an infant baptism guy, even though I was infantly baptized.

Probably most of you in this room are infantly baptized.

But the reason I don't make a big issue out of it is because you can see infants being baptized in the catacombs.

So even in that first century when persecution was happening, they wanted their children to be under the covenant.

They wanted to be under the covenant.

And so what they did is they they saw a bridge between circumcision.

Because remember, they were almost all Jewish believers still.

So circumcision and baptism.

So they were baptizing their kids like you would circumcise your kids into this new covenant in Christ Jesus.

So that's the situation.

And so this persecution is now John's the last leader of the apostles, and he's on Patmos.

And yet he says, grace and peace.

That's kind of good news, gang.

I don't know where you stand on this whole election thing.

About who I really don't have any idea who's gonna be elected.

Grace and peace.

And it ain't Nero.

Not even close.

Yeah, but if we elect this guy, then we'll lose all this.

Yes, yeah, okay.

And then if we get this guy, we don't know what we're gonna get.

And um, and you know, grace and peace.

Grace and peace.

And listen, grace first, peace second.

Grace and then peace.

Grace and then peace.

Church, don't miss this.

You are beloved, and you are loved.

And Christ went to the cross for you.

And if you were the only person on the face of the earth, he would have gone to the cross for you.

Grace, unmerited favor.

You can't earn it, you can't baptize yourself into it, you can't be on a church roll and get it.

You receive it.

It's a free gift.

For by grace you've been saved through faith.

Not of yourself.

It is a gift of God.

Not as a result of works.

You cannot work yourself into being righteous enough for a holy God to accept you, but you can be sinful enough for the righteous God to love you.

And so it's grace first.

Have you received his grace?

Have you given your heart to Christ?

Have you let him come into your heart?

Have you allowed him to come in and take over?

Have you surrendered to Christ?

Grace first.

Because you won't know the peace if you don't know the grace.

I didn't know anything about that peace until I got the grace.

Have you come to Christ?

Because the peace is what follows.

Peace comes true.

Grace.

Grace is always first because it's not our performance, it's his performance.

It's not our righteousness, it's his righteousness.

And what you're doing is you're receiving his performance.

You're receiving his righteousness.

Church, you're receiving his love.

That's how we're born again.

That's how we're saved.

And so he says, grace and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.

Who is.

This is for us.

From God's perspective, God is always now.

He is fully present.

He is fully past.

He's fully future.

Now, Hugh Ross one time described it this way, and I know I'm gonna mess it up, so I'm gonna do my best I can.

I haven't I heard it years ago.

But it would be like I took a piece of paper and I drew a triangle, so that triangle has length and it has width, right?

It's one-dimensional though.

But if I were to somehow put walls on it and create a cone with that triangle, it now has depth to it.

But if I look at it from ground level, it just looks like a dimension of one thing, because I'm looking at that one side of a triangle.

But if I go up above it and I look down on it, it actually looks like a circle.

Three different dimensions.

Jesus sees your past, your present, and your future now.

He sees you sanctified, he sees you glorified, he sees the work he's going to do in the days ahead, and he loves you, and he's with you, and he chooses you, and he's gonna be for you because I can tell you right, if you knew who I was when I was, you wouldn't be listening to me tonight.

Because my was, even my wife doesn't know all my wases.

And she doesn't want to know.

We were having a discussion with one of our kids the other night.

I don't know everything about your dad, and I don't want to.

And I went, oh, praise God.

And I don't want to know all about her wazes either.

Okay?

And so I'm not sure that in marriage you need to know everybody's wazes.

Okay?

But God knows our wazes.

And he's saying he is past, present, and future.

Now that I don't know about you, but that gives me great solace in this day and hour.

That he's working out his sovereign plan, even working through us.

So this is not some, oh, serrah, serah, whatever shall be, shall be, and I just kick back and do nothing.

That's unscriptural.

Because he calls us and he even says.

It.

I bless you by you reading the word, hearing the word, and obeying the word, following the word in your life.

And so we have this responsibility, and yet he's sovereign and omniscient.

And if you understand that, please talk to me after the service because I do not understand it.

I just know it says it.

He is the one who is and who was and who is to come.

He's fully in the now, but he's giving us a view of what he's going to be doing in the coming, in the days ahead.

Here's an outline of the book of Revelation in this verse.

The one who is is chapter one.

The one who is is chapter one.

The one who was is chapters two and three.

And the one who is to come is chapters four through twenty two.

The one who is, chapter one, the one who was, chapters two and three, the one who is to come, chapters four through twenty two.

He sees you complete in Christ.

I'm working on a book on the life of David called Worshiper and Warrior.

The subtitle is a 20 21-day journey into the dangerous life of David.

And we we go chapter from we go first and second Samuel.

So today I was working on identity, this issue of identity and how we find our identity in Christ.

And the thing that I see in David, now listen to this, don't miss this.

It actually wasn't my point in the book, but it's my point here, is that he says he was at 1 Samuel 13, 14 says, Samuel says, God says to Samuel, and Samuel speaks forth and writes in 1 Samuel, that God has chosen a man, who is a man after his own heart.

Then in Acts chapter 13, verse 22, Paul's preaching, and he says, God chose David, a man after his own heart, who will do all of his will.

Acts 13:22

Do you know what David did?

I mean, he was a magnificent sinner.

He had fabulous failures in his life.

And yet God saw his heart, and it makes sense in 1 Samuel 13 because, okay, that's the beginning.

Because there was all kinds of cool stuff that were said about Saul in his beginning, right?

But now it's a thousand years later, Paul's preaching, and Luke's writing the book of Acts, and he says the same thing.

And some of you are magnificent sinners.

And some of you have done horrendous things.

You've hurt a lot of people.

But when we go after his heart and we go after his grace, Jesus views you differently than you view yourself.

I mean, when you read the Hall of Fame, we should call it the Hall of Failure, Hebrews 11.

It's called the Hall of Fame of Faith.

It's like the Hall of Fame of Failure.

He says, Abraham's the father of our faith.

You know what he did?

He says to Abimelech, she's not my wife, she's my sister.

To save his own skin.

Twice.

Man of faith.

Wow, that's who I want to follow.

And yet he's called a man of faith.

David's a man after God's own heart who would do all of my will.

This is the God who sees your past and your present and your future, and he calls you sanctified and he calls you glorified and he loves you.

Are you experiencing that?

Are you experiencing that in your life?

Is there stuff happening in your life that you know you need to repent of because you're not experiencing that?

You need to do that tonight.

You need to fully bring it all to the Lord.

If you've never given your heart to Christ, tonight come to the glorified, beautiful, magnificent, risen Son of God, the Lamb of God.

Twenty-eight times called the Lamb of God in the book of Revelation, the Lion of Judah.

From the seven spirits who are before his throne.

What are the seven spirits?

Some have said he's referring to Isaiah 11, 2.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord.

Only problem is there's only six.

I believe it's speaking of the menorah, the seven branches of the menorah.

And here's why.

Revelation 4 5 says this.

And from the throne preceded lightnings, thunderings, and voices.

Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.

So the idea of seven in the menorah was the idea of completeness.

So don't get hung up on what are the seven spirits.

And if you want to believe it's Isaiah 11, 2, that's fine too.

But the reality is I believe he's speaking of the completeness, the all-encompassing completeness of the Spirit of God.

And the menorah, the seven candles, on the menorah, the branches of the candles, represent that perfection of the completeness of the Holy Spirit.

Verse 5.

And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth, to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

So Jesus is our faithful witness.

You couldn't have a more powerful verse in the Bible than verse 5.

All these titles are completing this idea of Jesus.

He's a faithful witness.

And so, you know, we go back to our presidential election coming up.

You know, we keep electing presidents, and I've been around longer than most of you, I think, in this room, and I've seen a lot of presidents come and go, and our taxes still go up higher, and the government always gets bigger, and we always have a lot of problems, and they always pick on the guy near the end, and it's like the other party does.

And I mean, who would want that job?

I mean, seriously, you've got to be a little weird.

But Jesus is our faithful witness.

So you're not going to solve the world's problems with whoever's president, but Jesus is our faithful witness.

He's faithful.

He's the firstborn from the dead.

He's the first to receive a resurrected body.

That's what that means.

So to the Jehovah's Witnesses that have knocked at your door, who hate this verse, and here's what they say: this is a quote from a Jehovah's Witness that I talked to years ago.

See, he is the firstborn.

That means he's a created being.

Well, read Psalm 89, Colossians 1, Romans 1, and Hebrews 1, and you pick up this idea of firstborn, to protocost in Greek, and it means the first of a new order.

Don't miss this.

The first of a new order.

And that new order is a resurrection body.

Folks, you're gonna get a resurrection body.

You're gonna get a resurrection and a body.

And you're gonna be 30 years old.

No, maybe you do, because all the priests had to be 30.

Um, it appears that in the Sanhedrin they were all 30.

30 is if you go through scripture, David becomes king when he's 30.

We believe Saul was king when he was 30.

So there's something about 30.

I don't know why, but there you go.

I want to be 30 again, and I get to, and I don't even have to work out.

I just have to die.

Right?

Okay.

No, he's the firstborn.

He's the firstborn, man.

He's the firstborn from the dead.

So so here's what he's saying.

He's saying, church, he's saying, he's the first of a new order of the resurrection.

You're gonna get a resurrection and you're gonna get a body.

And if you're a believer in Christ, you you die once, you live twice.

You die once, you live twice.

If you don't know the Lord, you live once, you die twice.

It's a bad deal.

For all of you here that do not know the Lord, you do not have a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, you're not growing in Him, this is as good as it gets.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Because let me tell you, in this book, and actually in this book of Revelation, it's gonna tell you where you're going and you don't want to go there.

This is as good as it gets.

But listen, listen, everybody, listen.

If you're a believer, a disciple of Christ, it gets no worse than this.

This is as bad as it gets.

You know, which is it?

This is as bad as it gets.

Die once.

We get to live twice.

We're living now.

We have eternal life now.

We die, we have eternal life then.

You don't know Christ?

You're living now, this is as good as it gets, you're gonna die twice.

You die physically, and you're gonna die spiritually.

So come to Christ tonight.

You really should.

And so he says to us, he's the firstborn from the dead.

And he's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

He's the ruler over Domitian, who's reigning in power over all the face of the earth at the civilized earth as they defined it at that time.

And Nero before that.

And the reason we believe in the dating that we have on the book of Revelation is because Paul was released at the assassination of Domitian in 96 AD.

And so here the Christians are in the catacombs, they're running for their life, they've now for 25 years been fed to the lions in the Colosseum in Rome, which you can still go to today, and uh, and yet he says he's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

That is really good news.

Under the strictures and the persecution of that time, the Lord Jesus says to John, ruler of the kings of the earth.

He's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.

And so the priest would take the sacrificial lamb and he would kill it.

He would sprinkle the blood on the altar to exhibit the forgiveness of sins, and Jesus is in this life, our sacrificial lamb, through the cross and the sacrifice of his life for our sins.

28 times in 22 chapters, he's described as the Lamb of God.

This is the present.

This is the present, church, for each of us that know Christ.

He loves you.

You are washed from your sins in his righteous blood.

Isn't that awesome?

And he's made us, verse 6, kings and priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

We are kings and priests with our God.

We are taking hold of our birthright, our inheritance, Romans 5, 17.

For if by the one man's offense death reign through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

You are called, you are commissioned, you are anointed, you are empowered to reign in this life.

It is your God-given commission.

It is your God-given mandate from Genesis 1 to be fruitful and to multiply and have dominion over the earth.

You are priests.

That means you're a worshiper.

You're kings.

That means you're a warrior.

We are worshipers and warriors on this earth.

Listen, folks, in our homes, we take dominion over our homes.

You know why?

Because we have kids.

And if you don't take dominion, they will.

They will come in and they will sneak into your bed and they will sneak through the closets and they will eat everything in the pantry.

And they will creep down into the den and watch cartoons.

And they and they will they will come and ask you for money constantly.

And they will use that money on frivolous things like whatever they spend their money on.

And so you have to have dominion, right?

Right?

And so we have dominion in a loving, graceful way, but you gotta have a little bit of order in the chaos, you know?

And so and so dominion, I believe, is ruling as Christ would rule, and that's in grace and love, and that's in joy.

That's in peace.

And so you're a king and you're a priest.

Don't forget that.

In Christ, you're a king and a priest, and and you have dominion over your job and you have responsibilities.

That's your garden.

And so, you know, God gave Adam the garden, and he said, rule over the garden, rule over the beasts of the field, rule over the plants, rule over it, plow it, make it beautiful, have they already had a greenhouse, but you know, make it yours.

That's before sin.

And so, church, you know, we we we've been given this rulership in Christ.

Verse 7, behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.

He's already jumping into the future, you know, even they who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him, even so.

Amen.

Daniel 7, 13 says this I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven.

Matthew 24, Jesus says this.

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Mark 14, 62, Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

Everybody's gonna see him.

Everybody is going to see him.

Every tribe, every group of people, every ethnicity that's still on the face of the earth when he comes will see him coming.

And they will mourn.

You know why they will mourn?

Because many will have not received Christ.

Many will have not given their heart to Christ, they would have given their heart to the beast, they will have given the heart of the false prophet.

They're following the ways of the Antichrist.

They have the stamp on their forehead, and they have given themselves to idolatry, and they have given themselves to debauchery, and they're gonna mourn.

And he's gonna come, and it's gonna be like a thief in the night.

And so it's gonna happen suddenly, when we least expect.

But everyone will see him coming on the clouds.

And I am the Alpha, verse 8.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Folks, there's no guarantees in this life.

There's no guarantees in this life.

But we have a guarantee from Jesus Christ as the Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, the Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, the beginning and the end, the completeness of the omniscience of God, that when you follow Christ, you do have guarantees that He's gonna take care of you, He's gonna watch over you, He's got your back, He knows your future, and if you'll follow Him, it is always good.

It is not always easy.

This church is called the Road for the Word God gave us seven times in those early days, the road less traveled.

And the road less traveled is often difficult and hard.

But I'll tell you what, I'll take difficult and hard with Jesus as my king and my leader, than difficult and hard with me as my leader.

I've tried out me much of my life, and it's not good.

If you get too much of me as a pastor here, it will be really bad.

Jesus is the pastor of this church, and I'm an under-shepherd under him as the chief shepherd, and may we be a spirit-filled church because we're following Jesus, the Lamb of God.

John Phillips writes, and I'll close with this.

One of the most stirring pages in English history tells of the conquest and the crusades of Richard I, the lion-hearted.

While Richard was always away trouncing Saladin in Jerusalem, his kingdom fell into bad times.

His sly and graceless brother John usurped all the prerogatives of the king and misruled the realm.

The people of England suffered, longing for the return of the king, and praying that it might be soon.

Then one day Richard came.

He landed in England and he marched straight for his throne.

Around that glittering coming, many tales are told, woven into the legends of England.

That's where we hit the stories of Robin Hood.

John's castles tumbled like ninepins.

Great Richard I laid claim to his throne, and none dared stand in his path.

The people shouted their delight.

They rang peel after peel on the bells.

The lion was back.

Long live the king.

And one day a king greater than Richard will lay claim to a rim greater than England.

Those who have abused the earth in his absence, seized his domains, and mismanaged his world, will all be swept aside.

Grace and peace to you.

Grace first, then peace.

The Lion of Judah is coming.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.