Unpacking Revelation: How to Read the Bible’s Most Misunderstood Book

We are today is week 15.

This is this is it.

This is the grand finale of the uh cover-to-cover series.

We started in the beginning of January, and we we said, hey, we're gonna go through the the whole Bible.

Of course, it's gonna be at a high level.

Uh some of it it was would was summary, and then of course we would zoom in and out.

But uh we started off just talking about what what is the Bible?

How did these 66 books uh become the Bible?

Who did who decided that and how was that determined?

And uh we looked at how to read the Bible.

So you think about this, the Bible is a very unique uh piece of literature.

It's written over 1,500 years, over 40 authors.

It's written in a variety of genres and different literary tools.

And so the framework we've been using in reading the Bible is three things it's it's literature, it's history, and then it's theology.

And it's uh frankly a mistake to just open the Bible, start reading it in English, and immediately coming up with theological answers based on uh how we're reading it now.

You could be reading it wrong.

Uh some of the ancient Near Eastern context and understanding some of the literary tools are tremendously helpful for us to make sure that we're understanding it well.

So we learn words like exegesis.

Exegesis is essentially recreating in our minds as best we can, understanding the original context.

Who's writing this?

Who are they writing it to?

What's the point?

And the more you can sort of recreate that scene, the more you can go into the next word we talked about was hermeneutics, which is essentially, okay, we know what it meant to them.

What is it supposed to mean to us?

Is this stuff we're supposed to do?

How do we apply it into our lives?

And so um we we kind of worked our way through uh the entire Bible, and now we are gonna end up in the last book of the Bible, which is the book of Revelation.

All right, now let me set expectations here.

Um, the book of Revelation is a very complicated book.

There's no way in the world I'm gonna be able to fully teach you the whole book.

I'm gonna give you kind of an overview and then we'll we will uh keep to the framework that we've been doing.

Um, but what what I'm not gonna be able to do is answer every question uh that you're gonna have or that I would have in the book of Revelation.

What I want to do though is I want to share some resources with you because we're gonna stick our toe in the water on this today.

And if you're like, man, I want to learn a lot more.

I'm hoping today uh to give you a little bit of confidence that you have tools that you can go into this.

A lot of people avoid the book of Revelation because because it is so rich in symbolism, you read it, it can be quite confusing.

I mean, there's dragons and beasts and all these things in there, and it's like, what do I do with all of this?

And so a lot of people, again, it's it can be a terrifying book because especially when you think about okay, what are the implications of this book as it relates to the future?

And to go, you know, I want to be ready for whatever's coming.

And uh probably the recipe for terror is if there's something scary coming that I don't understand, right?

If I have to try to crack a code that I can't understand, and if I don't crack the code, it's the scariest thing I can imagine.

Uh that's why a lot of people put their head in the sand uh as it relates to the book of Revelation.

But we're not gonna do that.

Today I'm hoping to set you on a course today, uh, ultimately, that uh you'll be able to do more with.

Let me, real quick, we'll put up on the screen some resources for you.

The first thing I want to do is I want to bring up the ones I've been bringing up the whole time because this is my last chance to do it.

Uh the one in the middle is the cultural background study Bible.

In fact, today I'm going to, when we're talking a little bit of the historical context, I'm going to uh show you something that I actually just took a picture of when I was studying in this Bible.

So it's so worth it.

You can get it easily on Amazon.

These other two books are How to Read the Bible for all it's worth, and how to read the Bible book by book, are just, I would just say you won't be sorry.

Having these in your resource library.

Uh it's written by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart, two brilliant, brilliant uh writers.

And so these are just good, good resources.

So on topic, go ahead and go to the next one.

These are on the topic of Revelation.

On the top right is the Bible Project.

Okay, this is free, easy.

You go to YouTube, you go to the Bibleproject.com, and what they do are visual summaries that they they construct in front of you.

They they draw them up in front of you that will just that will give you an outline and a summary of the book.

It will just give you so much better of an understanding of a 10,000-foot view of the book.

So you see, it looks like chicken scratch up there to the right, but when you watch it unfold, okay, and because Revelation is so complicated, they make two episodes.

So it's about 20 minutes, two episodes to really understand uh where where uh how we should think about it.

In the middle is a book from an author I've mentioned several times, I think just one of the brilliant theologians of our time, N.T.

Wright.

He wrote a book called Revelation for Everyone.

Uh he he he's written several of his own commentaries, like he wrote John, the book of John for Everyone.

And so this is his uh for the book of Revelation, if you want to get more into it, great resource.

And then this other one is reading Revelation Responsibly by Michael Gorman, uh, which again is another one that, especially when you look at some of the symbolism and some of the things in the in the uh book of Revelation, it's hard to know sometimes what is symbolic and what is literal.

And so sometimes people will talk about these things in in their literal uh as they're literal, and so he will kind of help you work your way through that.

Definitely recommend those resources.

All right, so here we go.

We're going to our framework.

Revelation is literature, history, and theology.

We're gonna start with history, and then we'll go literature, and then we'll look at some theology.

Um, okay, so when you think about the book of Revelation, it's written by the Apostle John, same guy that wrote John, uh, the book of John and John, first, second, and third John, the letters.

Um, he writes Revelation.

Okay, so time period-wise, this book is dated toward the end of the first century.

And let me talk about some stuff going on, right?

Before this, uh in um the middle of the first century, um, you have the reign of Nero.

So Nero reigned uh as the emperor of Rome from AD 54 to A.D.

68, so a 14-year reign, and Nero was known as an absolute tyrant to Christians.

Um, what's going on is what we now would refer to as an imperial cult.

So the the emperors would see themselves as deity, would see themselves as gods, and would demand to be worshipped.

So if you kind of go back in history, that's more of an eastern idea, right?

A Greco-Roman or Greek uh coming from the West, that wasn't that wasn't really how they thought.

They might take a king or an emperor, and when they die, they may say, yeah, they were with the, you know, they're with the gods now.

But they didn't see them in real time when they were alive.

They didn't see them as deity.

That was more of an eastern thing.

And so as they moved east, they decided to adopt that.

And so you're gonna see that Nero is um, he he wants to be worshipped.

He insists on being worshipped, he wants, uh, he sets up ceremonies and he requires sacrifices, and they refer to Caesar as Lord, Nero as Lord.

In fact, uh I'll show you a coin that they had uh minted in Ephesus that shows it's a bronze coin.

Go ahead and bring that up.

And it has uh Nero in the image of Zeus, who is their chief deity.

And so uh this is the big reason why uh the Christians are being persecuted during this time.

And Nero is famous for his persecution of Christians, he fed them to animals, he crucified them.

Uh, and in fact, uh he was known for lighting them on fire to light his imperial um um uh like his outdoor spaces and and his his imperial outdoor seating and gardens.

And so he was absolutely uh terrifying.

In fact, even after he dies in AD 60, um, there were rumors that he was going to come back to life to terrorize the Christians, and certain people would would say, oh, yeah, Nero's back, he's not actually dead.

And and so he not only even after he died, uh people were still still terrified of him.

Uh at that time, okay, uh Herod Antipas was able to negotiate with the Roman government, and he basically said, Look, these Jewish people are not going to worship a person.

They they believe in their one true God, but he he negotiated what was called the Jewish exemption to be able to get them a deal where they would say, Hey, we're not going to sacrifice to Nero, but we'll sacrifice to God on behalf of Nero and his health.

And so once Nero died, they quit doing that, and Rome saw that essentially as an act of war.

And so that's why in AD 70, Rome comes in and ransacks the city of Jerusalem, destroys the temple, and then they set up standards and images of the emperors where this temple used to be, and set those up as places of worship.

Okay.

So now, okay, you have now a group of people, Jewish people, Christians, who go, We believe that Jesus is the one true God, Jesus is the king of kings, and declare him the Lord of Lords.

They're not going to bow to anybody else.

Uh, and so now they are in, they're being persecuted.

They're their physical health and lives are in danger, and certainly a tremendous amount of social pressure.

So you now have Domitian at the end of the first century, who is is the emperor while John is writing this letter, uh, writing this apocalypse.

And Domitian continues this um uh imperial cult.

So he goes to Ephesus, which is again Asia Minor, where where these these uh letters are supposed to be distributed, he goes to Ephesus and he puts a 25-foot statue of himself in their temple, in their biggest temple.

And so again, this becomes a very controversial thing because now these these men are declaring themselves to be uh gods.

Okay, so that's what's going on historically.

So when you have um John writing to the um uh these churches and these early Christians, the early church, he's encouraging them to follow Jesus, to see Jesus as Lord, and to endure whatever persecution that they have to for his name's sake.

Um okay, so let's look at literature.

The the book of Revelation is what's called Jewish apocalyptic literature.

Jewish apocalyptic literature.

And so the purpose of Jewish apocalyptic literature is to reach back into the history, into the Old Testament, to essentially encourage people in real time, contemporary Jewish people, to stand fast, to stay firm, and to endure suffering because they're questioning: is following Jesus worth it?

Should we just give in to Domitian?

Should we just give in to the Romans?

They seem unbeatable.

Uh is it worth even fighting over it?

Many people thought after Nero died that the Roman government, the Roman Empire would implode, and it didn't.

And so they were seen uh as impenetrable.

So they're going, should we even fight this fight or should we just give in?

And so uh what John is doing is he's reaching back into the Old Testament.

So if I was to say word association with the book of Revelation, um, what would you think of?

You wouldn't think of the past, you would tend to think of the future.

You'd say it's a futuristic book, and it's a scary futuristic book.

The irony is the book is rooted in the past.

It's really a book about the Old Testament, reaching back to those examples, and it's supposed to be rooted in hope and encouragement.

Okay, it by far is the book of the New Testament with the most Old Testament references.

Conservatively, it's got it has over 250 Old Testament references.

Uh, some would look at, again, a lot of the symbolism and would say, actually, there's probably more like 500 Old Testament references.

And so it's rich in that.

But then it has tons of symbols, which is why it's prone uh to misinterpretation.

So you're gonna see when you read Revelation, you're gonna see numbers.

Okay, so you see that a lot of the number three, the number seven.

You'll see some large numbers.

And what you need to understand about those numbers is those numbers are not supposed to be specific, they're not making specific quantitative statements.

They're making qualitative statements and they're largely symbolic.

Uh, you're gonna see seals, not like the animal, but like uh like seals on like a scroll, um uh trumpets, bowls, crowns, beasts, dragons, battles, weapons, lamb, lion.

You're gonna see all this stuff.

Uh and so what you have are Old Testament references and Greco-Roman references.

And um one of the things that's used a lot, I've shared this with you in the past, but is is an interpretive concept, a literary concept called remes.

And a remes is essentially a hint that reaches back, and it might give you a sentence or part of a sentence or give you a symbol or picture that's supposed to take you back to a moment in time.

In this sense, it's the Old Testament, but it would be like if I said to you, uh, hey, it's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, right?

You would hear that, you would know I'm talking about Neil Armstrong on the moon, you know, space travel, all that stuff.

It would take you back to that whole situation, okay, just with that one sentence.

So you're gonna see that a lot, and that's why we have to sort of have our bearings on Jewish apocalyptic literature to even read it, otherwise it's super confusing.

I'm gonna give you a great example right now.

So, Revelation 13.

So let's imagine you wake up for work, you get your coffee, you're like two sips in, right?

You're just you're just starting to get the caffeine, start to think about getting into your bloodstream, and you're getting ready for work, and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna encourage myself today in God's word.

I'm gonna encourage myself in the Lord and read some scripture, just get a little bit of that in my system, and you open up Revelation 13, 1 through 3.

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea, and I saw a beast coming out of the sea.

It had ten horns and seven heads with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had the feet of those of a bear and a mouth of that of a lion.

The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.

One of the heads of the beast seemed to have a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed, and the whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.

You're like, all right, I guess it's time to go to work.

You know, I don't Lord bless it.

I don't know what quite to do with it.

Maybe it has something to do with my boss as a beast, or I don't know, Lord, what you're gonna do with this, but God bless you.

You know, let's uh let's head to work, turn on the radio.

Um, what's going on here?

Okay, how how would we even handle this?

Well, okay, so what this is is a remes.

So it feels like John is on the Isle of Patmos and he just imagined this for the first time, and this is a unique vision, but it's definitely not.

So what he's doing is reaching back to the book of Daniel, chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

So before we do that, though, bring bring it back up, and I want you to notice and just make a mental note of the highlights.

Okay, so you see ten horns, go to the next one.

You see a leopard, you see a bear, and you see a lion.

All right?

Okay, so when we hear that again, it doesn't mean anything to us, to the Jewish audience.

It would have taken them back to Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Now, quick time out before we read Daniel 7.

If you think back on the book of Daniel, why would John, in this moment in time, reach back to Daniel of all books?

The book of Daniel, in the book of Daniel, is the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Remember this story?

Nebuchadnezzar builds a huge statue to himself, demands everybody bow to it.

If you don't bow to it, we throw you in the fiery furnace.

Does that sort of rhyme with Domitian, who has a 25-foot statue in the temple, telling everybody to make sacrifices and bow to me and call me King of kings and Lord of Lords?

And if you don't, it's your life.

So he's reaching back into this.

This is the same Daniel, Daniel and the lion's den.

If you pray to your God, if you honor your God instead of honoring the king above your God, then we'll throw you to the lions.

And what does he do?

He says, I'm going to be faithful to my God.

So you have a group of people who now have their own Nebuchadnezzar.

They have their own tyrant.

And they're going, How do we stand when our lives are on the line?

So what is he doing with apocalyptic literature?

He's reaching to the past to encourage them in the present.

This is what faithfulness to God looks like right here, right now.

So in this, uh in Daniel 7, he has a vision of four beasts.

And so here we go.

Daniel 7, 3 through 6, see if this rings a bell.

Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.

The first was a lion, and it had wings like that of an eagle.

I watched until its wings were torn off and lifted from the ground.

So that's again imagery of essentially an empire falling.

And uh I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground, so it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.

And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear.

Okay, so we got the lion, the bear, was raised up on one of its sides, had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.

And it was told, Get up and eat your fill of flesh.

And after that I looked, and there before me was a third beast, another beast, and it looked like a leopard.

So we've got the lion, the bear, and the leopard.

If you skip down to verse 7, it says, There before me was a fourth beast, terrifying and frightening and very powerful, and it had large iron teeth, and it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left.

And it was different from all the other beasts, and it had ten horns.

Alright.

So all of this ten horns, lion, leopard, um, and bear, okay, when we hear it, it's just a weird uh morning with our coffee.

To the recipients of this letter, they go right back to Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

And so now we go, what is this imagery?

So so now we've got the Old Testament that we're reaching into, but now we're looking at the Greco-Roman and the imagery of the world.

So these images were things that represented the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire.

So these visuals would have been would have been visuals that they would have used in their statues, in their art to walk into, uh, their buildings, they would have had set these up as visuals to represent their prowess and their power.

And so what in the book of Daniel, what he's he's talking about, these empires falling.

Okay, these empires falling, and then he prophesies there will be a fourth empire which represents the ten horns.

So in the book of Revelation, when John is talking about this, and he says, and then there was a beast with ten horns, what he's doing is he's applying it directly to their context, which was the Roman Empire, which was the work of Nero, which was the work of Domitian.

And so he's saying, hey, listen, I know it's bad.

I know that we have this ego-maniacal Nero to Domitian, and they're, you know, they're trying to get us to bow down and worship, and there's an imperial cult, and there's persecution and injustice.

But look, these empires fall, and this one will fall too.

And so, but but he's introducing, again, Rome as the beast, right?

The the idea of the dragon is is the the idea of empire.

So when you when we're trying to go from an exegetical standpoint, which is essentially, what did they hear?

What what what how did they receive it?

They're John's writing about Rome.

And these the churches in Asia Minor who received this letter are thinking about Rome when they're reading this.

From a hermeneutic standpoint, when we go, well, what does this mean to us?

It forces us to think not only about Rome and Assyria and Babylon and Persia, but we have to look deeper than that at the empire mentality.

We have to look at what empires are prone to.

We have to look at our context.

We've talked about this before.

When you look at the Bible and you look at the kingdom of God, there is a juxtaposition and a contrast between the kingdom of God expressed through Jesus, the good news of the gospel of the kingdom of God.

That's what he came talking about.

And it wasn't geographic and it wasn't national, it was ultimately Jesus as king, and then we conduct ourselves this way.

That's what the Sermon on the Mount was about.

We took up four months to talk about that.

So you have the kingdom of God versus the empire of the world.

What are the differences in the mentalities?

The summary is empires are built on the love of power and the power of fear.

And the kingdom of God is built on the power of love.

And so ultimately, what he's shown.

Is these empires will rise and they will fall and they'll be powerful and they'll be beastly, and because of their craving and lust for power and the way they control with fear, they will do a lot of damage.

But don't give in, don't be seduced.

Don't give in.

Follow the kingdom.

Who is your king?

And who will you follow?

And who will you be obedient to, and who will you be loyal to?

And so he's calling them to faithfulness.

Let me give you the outline.

And this again, I took this from Gordon Fee in the How to Read the Bible book by book.

So go ahead and bring it up.

This is a uh the first three chapters are the historical setting.

So essentially, John announces he's the author.

He's writing it on the Isle of Patmos.

He says, I've been exiled to Patmos because of Christ.

So in other words, because I'm saying Jesus is Lord and I won't bow to Domitian, I've been sent to prison, so to speak.

He's been exiled to Isle of Patmos.

And then he goes into this motif of the seven churches of Asia Minor, and he recreates a scene that would be the closest comparison to us would be like a State of the Union address.

So at that time, Caesar would make speeches, and he would talk about cities or regions, and he would say, To this region of Columbus, I commend you for this.

Good job on this, good job on that.

But I have this against you.

And then he would tell us what he didn't like, and then he would say, and then here's the judgment if you don't fix it.

So that was a common political way of speaking to your constituents.

So what John does here is he sets up God as king, and he's saying to the seven churches who are supposed to pass these books around in Asia Minor, here's what I commend you for, and here's what I have against you.

You need to fix it, or there will be consequences, there will be judgment.

So he does that in the first three chapters.

After that, from chapters four to eight, five, uh is the vision of heaven and earth.

And so you see a heavenly throne, and then there's a vision of a scroll with seven seals.

Okay, now in this vision, I'm simplifying it, but um the summary of this is that this the scroll represents the judgment of God, the just judgment of God.

But the just judgment of God is in a scroll and it's sealed up with seven seals.

So they're like, man, we got this problem because we have this, we have the scroll with God's judgment, but no one can open it.

There's no one who's worthy to open it.

No one's able to open it.

Because again, in their context, symbolically, when you when you when you give a scroll, who who opens it?

Well, the person who it was written to and the person who has the authority to open it.

So like no one's able to open God's judgment except, and then he gives a vision of the Lamb of God, Jesus, the one who came slain from the foundation of the earth, the Lamb of God.

And he's the only one who has the authority.

He's the only one who has the permission.

He's the one it was written to, and he's the one with the authority to open it.

So now he opens the scroll, the Lamb of God.

And then it starts with a preliminary judgment on the empire, and uh it has a vision of seven trumpets.

So these seven trumpets represent warnings, and it also represents judgments.

And so you'll see um, like at one point, um it will talk about, it will reach back to Exodus.

So that the plagues in Exodus.

If you remember when Pharaoh was holding out, he wouldn't let the, you know, Moses says, Let my people go, and he won't do it, and then God sends plagues on him.

So in this judgment upon uh Rome, he's he he reaches back, he says, you know, he's giving these warnings and then and then talking about these plagues, and he's using the same, some of the same ones from Exodus.

And then you have these uh two interlude visions, and then you have a conflict between the church and evil powers, chapters 12 through 14.

The conflict between church and evil powers.

So you have uh a war in heaven.

Again, this is a vision, a visual, symbolic war in heaven, and then it's aftermath, the beasts out of the sea and the earth, and then vindication and judgment.

Then the next part you have the seven bowls, which represent God's judgment on Babylon.

So again, anytime you see Babylon in the book of Revelation, it's referring to the Roman Empire.

It just calls them Babylon because, again, that's referring to an old uh empire and uses that symbolically.

And so Babylon is judged.

And then at the end, you have uh what we call the original tale of two cities, between chapters 17 and 22, which creates again a contrast between Babylon, the city that's given into the uh empire mentality, and the new Jerusalem.

The new Jerusalem.

And now we're gonna move, okay, we've we've done the history, we've done some literature, now we're gonna move to some theology.

Um in the we're gonna go to the last couple uh chapters, and by the way, there's tons of theology in this book, but I'm gonna give you just a little bit here toward the end.

And chapter 21, chapter 21 is describing the New Jerusalem.

It's like, what is the new Jerusalem, right?

Okay.

So what John does here is he reaches back to the book of Ezekiel, chapter 47.

Ezekiel 47 · chapter mention

In Ezekiel 47, the context is okay, this is really good when you get it in context.

So their temple has been destroyed.

Okay, and Ezekiel has now a vision of a new temple.

So the temple that Solomon built has been destroyed, which is heartbreaking when that's where the presence of God is.

That's your holy place.

So the temple's been destroyed, and now Ezekiel is seeing a vision for a new temple.

Now look at this.

Ezekiel 47, 1 through 3.

In his vision, he says, The man brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the temple faced the east.

And the water was coming down from under the south side of the temple to the south of the altar, and then he brought me back to the north gate and led me uh around outside of the gate facing the east, and the water then trickled to the south side, and the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand.

Now, this is common in the Old Testament for them to measure the temple.

Okay, so he's measuring the temple.

Don't worry about all those directions, you just get the idea, he's measuring the temple.

And look at this he measured off a thousand cubits.

Okay, so Ezekiel is seeing a vision of the new temple, and you know how big a thousand cubits is in modern measurement?

That's why you need that study Bible.

Alright?

In the study Bible, it will tell you in feet how big that is.

It's 1,700 feet.

Alright?

So, why that's significant?

He has a vision for an expanded temple.

It's bigger than the one that Solomon built.

So when he's writing about it, he's going, listen, guys, I know we're down about the temple being destroyed.

But that's not the last word.

God's still doing stuff.

So there's another temple coming, and I saw a vision of it, and it's gonna be 1,700 feet.

Now, again, that's not even necessary for the specifics.

He's just like, God's doing something new, and it's bigger and better, so let's get on board.

Let's not lose heart.

So when John in Revelation 21 is writing about the new Jerusalem, look what he says in Revelation 21, 15 and 16.

He said, The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls.

The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide.

He measured the city with a rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, as wide and as high as it is long.

So imagine a cube, okay, wide, square, and in the sky, 12,000 stadia, each measurement.

How much is 12,000 stadia, right?

You're like, come on, I don't know what is 12,000 stadia in modern day measurements.

It's in the book.

Go to your study Bible, you go down to the footnote, it'll tell you that 12,000 stadia is 1,400 miles.

1,400 miles.

Okay.

Which is essentially from here to El Paso, Texas.

That's how far it is.

So in this, the second to last book of the Bible, John is having a vision of the New Jerusalem.

And he's seeing the city, and the city's bigger than the city.

It's not about precision of 1,400 miles.

It's about it's beyond what they've ever seen.

It's further than they've ever gone.

None of them had probably ever gone 12,000 stadia or 12,000 stadia.

None of them had ever gone 1,400 miles in the way they travel.

He's going, it is bigger than you can possibly imagine.

And it's higher than you can possibly imagine, and it's greater than you can possibly imagine.

And then when you keep reading and you keep going down, in uh Revelation 21, 22, he says, I did not see a temple in the city.

Because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

This is good stuff.

Okay?

Now think about this through the lens of the hearer, the contemporary hearer at that time.

How apropos you have Ezekiel, who's having to come to grips with losing the top temple of Solomon, but a vision of a new temple, 1700 uh feet, and now you have reaching back into that, into encouraging them in real time because what happened to their temple in AD 70 destroyed.

We're back to the destruction of the physical temple and we're we're crushed over it.

And he said, Don't be crushed.

Because God is doing something in this new Jerusalem that is beyond borders.

It's beyond infrastructure, it's beyond, it's heavenly, it's bigger than you've imagined, it's greater than you've imagined, but it's different than you've imagined.

Don't lose heart that your temple's been destroyed because your temple's not been destroyed.

Your temple ultimately is the Lamb of God and the Lord God Almighty.

And so he's casting a vision of a temple that's not physical.

And for some of these people, friend, as exciting as it is for us, would have been sad for them because they had so much emotional connection to this physical temple.

When it went down, they thought life is over.

They thought the bad guys have won.

And he said, No, in the new covenant, I'm doing something that nobody can, it's it's beyond anything physical.

It's beyond anything your eye can see.

It's beyond that.

And so he's inviting them not only to be encouraged, but to get on board with what God is up to.

Whew, I'm gonna keep going.

Ezekiel 47, 12.

So if so we just read for Ezekiel 47, 1 through 3.

Look at this.

Ezekiel 47, 12.

He has a vision of he says, I see fruit trees of all kinds.

These fruit trees represent God's people and their fruitfulness, what they do.

So he says, the fruit trees of all time will grow on both banks of the river, and their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail.

In other words, most trees bear fruit in season, whatever.

He's like, these trees will not stop bearing fruit.

And he said, Every month they will bear fruit, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them.

Their fruit will serve for look at this, their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.

He said, their fruit will feed people and bring fullness, and their leaves will bring healing.

And so to the, again, to the hearers of Ezekiel, that's still tribal, it's still national, it's still us.

There's still a line in the sand, and so God's going to save us.

And now he's saying, look, this is beyond nation.

Look, look how it's written in Revelation 22, 1 through 3.

It says the angel of the Lord showed me a river of the water of life as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city.

On each side of the river stood the tree of life.

By the way, this is the last chapter of the whole Bible.

Revelation 22.

Do you have a Bible in front of you?

If you do, look at the top of chapter 22.

What's the heading?

Huh?

River of life.

River of life, Eden restored.

So the whole place it started in Genesis 1 through 3, he restores Eden in chapter 22 of Revelation.

And he says, And down the middle of the street on each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

Does it remind you?

Ezekiel 47.

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Verse 3 No longer will there be any curse.

In chapter 22, come on.

In chapter 22 of Revelation, he reverses what Adam did in chapter 3 of Genesis.

The new Adam.

Man.

Alright, I gotta wrap this up because I'm three minutes over, but I don't even care.

It's 12.

I don't even know what time it is.

The Baptists are already eating at the buffet.

So we got a little bit more time.

Revelation 19.

This is the last one.

This is the perfect way to lead into Easter.

Revelation 19.

This is the image of Jesus, the king, heading into the battle of good and evil.

And it says in Revelation 19, 11, John says, I saw the heaven.

I saw heaven open, standing open, and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true.

It's Jesus.

With justice, he judges and wages war.

With justice, he judges and wages war.

The one who is able to unseal the scroll.

The one who is able to be the ultimate judge is Jesus and Jesus alone.

He alone has the authority, he alone has the wisdom.

He alone knows enough to know enough about the situation to know what the judgment should be.

That we can trust his judgment to be in a line with justice.

His justice, with justice, he judges and wages war.

His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns.

He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.

Verse 13, he is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the word of God.

It's kind of weird that he has a robe dipped in blood and he hasn't even gone to battle yet.

Whose blood is on the robe?

It's his own blood.

John's writing to a group of people who feel defeated, who look out and see Domitian building a 25-foot statue of himself.

They see the consequences of fighting against Rome.

They're questioning, should I just give in?

And where's Jesus in all this?

And he's gone.

And should we keep following the kingdom of God?

And should we keep operating according to the Spirit or is our eye, are we going to walk by by by sight instead of by faith?

And John says to them, the ultimate victor, and the ultimate victory is that Jesus has already won the battle.

The blood that is on him is his own.

What he did on the cross, what he did on the cross is the ultimate victory.

And so, friend, I encourage you, don't be scared of this book.

Go into it.

You've got the tools.

Work your way through.

Be patient and work your way through this thing and start to look.

And what I think you'll find is the further that you dig into the history, and the more that you dig into the literature, and the more that you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, is you're going to continue to see a faithful, gracious, powerful, glorious, holy Jesus to emerge as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Let's pray together.

Thank you, Jesus.

Lord, as it says in Revelation 4, day and night they never stop saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

And so today, Lord, we say you are worthy of all glory and honor.

You are the Lord our God.

Lord, we bow before you today.

Lord, like first century Jewish people, we have our own set of challenges, we have our own set of concerns, we have our own set of fears in our world that you put us in in our context.

And yet, Lord, somehow, in some way, in John's intention to both challenge and encourage seven churches in Asia Minor, we ourselves find ourselves challenged and encouraged.

Lord, I pray that today, amidst all of the images and visuals and news headlines and realities that we see, that you would bring a picture of Jesus, the one true King, to our eyes.

Lord, give us the courage to live it out, to walk it out.

Give us the wisdom and the grace, Lord God, to be the kingdom of God, to be the people of God.

Lord, I pray that you would guide us and give us wisdom.

Help us to be more like Jesus.

Lord, I pray for each individual today, Lord, you've got so many different people here with different avenues of influence and levels of authority in different places.

Lord, I pray, God, that we would, in a world that is often enthralled with power and often bound in fear, controlled even more than we know by our fear.

That you would help us to operate on a higher plane, to walk by faith and not by sight, to be completely motivated and driven by the power of love.

The example set by you.

For Lord, you don't ask us to give something that we've not received.

And we receive your love and grace, even fresh and new in this moment.

So use us as individuals at every every corner of this community.

And Lord, use us as a collective.

I pray that everybody that walks in this door would feel the presence of Jesus, would see the eyes of Jesus.

For we are the body of Christ.

In Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.