Revelation 1:1-8 “More Than Meets the Eye”

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! God wins. Grace prevails. Jesus reigns. You may have heard that the book of Revelation was complicated.

So I wanted to give it to you simple, upfront. Maybe some of you were expecting bigger words like

post-millennialism and pre-tribulation, and we'll get to some of those complex matters later.

But at the heart of Revelation is a message that is as simple and as hopeful as you could possibly

imagine right at the heart of our lives and our world. And that is why I am so excited,

albeit a little intimidated, to start preaching through Revelation with you. We're going to be

there for a while. Get comfortable. See, Revelation's message is that in spite of real evil and darkness

in human history and in your life, God wins. So don't lose heart. There's real hope. It's found in God

outside of us. And grace prevails. Good comes out on top. So the best is always yet to come for us.

And Jesus reigns. So worship Him. Love Him. Delight in Him. Follow Him. Worship Him like we've been

enjoying doing together this morning. Revelation is full of images. So I wanted to share one

with you this morning that really helped me this week. Thursday morning, I went up on the mountain

here at Blevins Gap Land Trust. I'd been told that the sunrise would happen right about six o'clock.

So about that time, I made it up to the first clearing at the top of the mountain, and I saw this.

Thick fog everywhere. Forget seeing the sunrise. I could barely see the trees right next to me or my

hand in front of my face. It was just fog. Disappointed, I just jogged on down to the next clearing

and turned to find a gorgeous sunrise developing. It was there all along. But from some angles,

I wouldn't have been able to see it. From some perspectives, darkness and clouds would have been

all there. And all there was, all that I could see, I almost missed out on something truly glorious.

You ever have that experience in your life? Does life ever seem more confusing and chaotic

and cloudy than it does clear? Maybe the first week of school? Maybe. But maybe wars?

Disasters? Diseases?

Maybe you're hurting.

Maybe you're suffering.

And things just never seem to get better when you thought that they were promised to.

Maybe life seems out of control and you don't see any purpose in it. And you were told there was one.

Maybe like John who writes the book of Revelation, your plan for your life is not going the way that you

expected. Because of John's faith in Jesus, he is exiled on a tiny island here in the

latter years of his life. This was not John's ideal retirement plan.

Life seeming foggy and dark.

And right into that kind of darkness, God shines the light of hopeful good news.

God wins. Grace prevails. Jesus reigns. The sunrise is there.

Behind the clouds.

In awe and gratitude.

In awe and gratitude. If it doesn't lead you to stand before the storms of life with hope and confidence,

you're not getting the right message.

That's what it's for.

We need to ask for God's help because it can be hard to hear for us.

And then I want to look for a few minutes at just the first few verses of Revelation.

They're at the very back of your Bible.

Pray with me.

Father, we long to see something truly glorious.

Someone truly glorious.

We want to see more of where we fit in with him.

But we're limited.

And we're distracted.

And we struggle with that.

And so as you give us your word, would you not only open it to us, but open our eyes and our hearts to hear it and to see Jesus.

Please help us by your spirit in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.

He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy.

And blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.

And from the seven spirits who are before his throne.

And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.

To him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

Behold, he is coming with the clouds.

And every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.

And all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Even so, amen.

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

Thus far, God's holy word for which we give him thanks.

What does Revelation teach us about itself right up front?

It's going to give us the introduction.

In addition to being the word of God through John, it begins, very first word, by saying it's the revelation.

The apocalypse is the word of, second word, Jesus Christ.

It puts it in some ways in the category of apocalyptic literature, which probably you haven't read a ton of.

But that means it reveals, it discloses, it unveils something, something otherwise or previously hidden or shrouded.

It's going to show us.

What?

This revelation is focused on Jesus.

In fact, it's a revealing of Jesus by Jesus, right?

Passed from God to Jesus through an angel who delivered it to John to give to everyone else, all of his servants.

So whatever else it may reveal or explain, it's first and foremost centered on Jesus.

In case you don't know this about the book, it tells us here in the first verse that there will be figurative representation.

Now that's what this verb means, to show, to give signs for.

A figurative doesn't mean not real.

But it may be that there are signs that are symbolic for other things.

We're going to see a host of these through the book of Revelation because seeing is really important here.

Jesus is showing his servants all John saw.

It's unusual.

Typically, God's word is heard or announced, even read.

But this apocalyptic literature commonly used visions, images to communicate truth.

So we're going to have to look and listen through those lenses, he's telling us, as we go.

I think to help us, you could picture it, what you're going to be doing in Revelation like walking through an art museum.

Okay?

There's paintings all over the place, maybe of the similar scene or the same event.

And Revelation is going to do that.

It's going to describe the same events from different perspectives.

It's not merely a chronological book exactly the way we might think about it.

Sometimes it's a different painting of the same event from just five chapters previous in the book.

And you just saw it in the other room of the museum, right?

What does that help us with?

What does that do for us?

Well, it engages our imaginations.

It brings us, helping us to put ourselves right there in the event itself.

It stirs our hearts to wonder, to appreciate different facets of what's going on,

to marvel at a picture, not a mere description of something.

Kids, some of you like to draw pictures of what you read in the Bible.

Sometimes after a sermon, you will bring them and show me.

And that's great.

If you like doing that, you're going to enjoy Revelation.

Even if some of your pictures might get a bit scary,

many of the ones that you draw as we read are going to be marvelous.

You're not even going to be able to draw everything you want to.

But this book is not mere apocalyptic literature like some other writings at the time.

It's also referred to here as prophecy.

What Jesus wants us, his servants, to see is needful truth.

In other words, it does tell us things that are our future.

Most agree with me, it says some things that are still future to us today.

Things that must soon take place for the time is near.

Now with the coming of the Messiah, he's saying,

we are in what the Bible calls the last days.

It's this era of history that we have been living in for 2,000 plus years now,

where we can count on certain things to happen because Jesus tells us they will,

and we need to hear them to know how to live in this time.

Sometimes, though prophecy is not predictive of the future,

but will correct us as God's people.

God's people then and now.

That's what prophets do, right?

Just wait a couple of weeks until we hear the letters to the seven churches.

Convicting.

Challenging.

Directing us today.

Not just one day, someday.

What's going to happen.

Prophetic in addition to apocalyptic.

And finally, Revelation is also a letter.

Yes, there's a lot that John will see.

Images that he will paint.

But it is also written.

God's written word.

Sent specifically to his people, right?

Like most of the New Testament books, they're letters addressed to a church.

This one to seven churches in Asia.

Today, they're all in Turkey.

But seven is a special number pointing to fullness.

There are lots and lots of sevens in Revelation.

Okay, you can have fun keeping track of them.

But it's one of those numbers that helps us understand something else behind it.

Here, it's clearly meaning seven actual churches.

They exist.

On behalf of all the churches, the fullness of churches of Jesus Christ then and now.

This is for us as God's people.

And for those to whom it is sent, to us, it is for their blessing, it says.

What a gift.

This made me feel bad, honestly, for not preaching it sooner.

Some of you have been very patient over the years.

Blessing when we read.

When we read.

When we listen.

When we obey.

When we center our lives and hope on the central hope of the book, Jesus.

It's for your blessing.

People of God.

It was not written to confuse you.

but to show you truth. Revelation is not meant to make God harder to understand, but to unveil,

to reveal him to you more. He wants you to know him. It's not intended to frustrate or to scare

you, but to bless you, okay? To bless you with grace, the goodness of God poured into you beyond

what you could ever deserve, to bless you with peace, the well-being that comes from graciously

being welcomed into relationship with the one you were made for, grace and peace.

There may be a moment in the next few months when you need to come back and remember that

revelation is designed by God to bless you. What a good gift that is.

Well, what do we need to know about the one sending this blessing? The triune God. God in three persons,

Father, Son, and Spirit, the whole Godhead together here. First from the one who is and who was

and who is to come. Long before you live, long after you are gone, he is Yahweh, the I Am,

the self-existent God over all. And he not only spans past and present and future, but also verb change.

He is to come, not just will be, but is to come, to draw near to you, to be present with you, to assure you

of his control of absolutely everything in your life. When this description is repeated in verse 8,

he adds the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the one in charge of everything. The Almighty,

who sovereignly rules over every single thing then, every single thing now, every single thing in the

days ahead, there is nothing that he can't do. He, isn't this amazing? He brings you grace and peace

that you don't deserve and that you can't find anywhere else. He brings it to you. Then there are the seven

spirits before his throne, almost certainly a reference here to the Holy Spirit, referred to this way

several times in the prophets. There's our seven again, right? It means the full Spirit, importantly,

before the throne of God, ready to exalt the Father and the Son by bringing into our world, into our life,

what the King on the throne decrees. The Spirit's going to make it happen.

But in this description of the triune God, the Son gets the most attention and description.

This is about revealing him after all, right? Jesus Christ. Fully God couldn't be any clearer

in this description that he also is the one who was and is and is to come. Jesus is called the faithful

witness. That means he perfectly reveals the Father to us. The Almighty, ever-existing God is truthfully

and accurately shown for who he is when Jesus comes in the flesh. That's part of witness.

But so is the extent that Jesus went to to do that. The word for witness is martus. It's the word we get

martyr from. He faithfully suffers. Jesus doesn't pull back. Even when he goes to the cross, he endures to the

very end. He is faithful beyond anyone else. The faithful witness. And that sense of it is needed here

because he is also called the firstborn of the dead. This word means not only has he risen, not only is he alive

again after being truly dead. Wow, that's amazing. But it's even more than that. It's that because he is,

many others will be too. Many other martyrs, sufferers will die and yet live again. This great

faithful martyr will see to it that even death itself will not have the last word in your life. Indeed,

he conquers death for us so that we too rise to new life. Praise Jesus, right? This is amazing good news.

And finally, he's called the ruler of kings on earth. There is a king over all the other kings.

Then, now, tomorrow, and forever. Neither Nero, nor Domitian, nor Charlemagne, nor Hitler,

nor Trump, nor Charles, nor Netanyahu, nor Putin, anybody else holds a candle to his reign. There is no

comparison. He holds the hearts of kings in his hands. The ones who seem powerful now are to him,

but a drop in the bucket. They will come and they will go and he will be on the throne. You know how

you can know that? See, he is the anointed one. He is the messianic king going all the way back to the

line of David. These descriptions of Jesus are all coming from Psalm 89. Quick side note,

there are over 500 Old Testament allusions in the book of Revelation. About 70 percent of the book

is referencing something in the Old Testament. So, you want to understand Revelation better?

read Daniel. Read the Psalms. Read Exodus. We'll notice many of these as we go. Not 500 this morning.

Today, just Psalm 89. Psalm 89 celebrates God's promise to David of a king who will always and

forever be on his throne. Verse 27, I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

Sound familiar? His throne will continue. He will always rule like the sun and the moon of faithful witness

in the skies. Does John in Revelation have any question? Who is this unique, all-time great ruler,

the promised king? Who that is? No. Jesus the Christ. He has no rival, no equal, no competition.

He reigns over every particle, over every power, over every person. And that is why, friends, you can have

hope when things seem to be out of control. It's not some pie-in-the-sky hope. This is lion-on-the-throne

kind of hope. That he is there today and no one can take him off of it and he's controlling what you're

enduring and he's got you. You can have hope. That's what he's telling you. There's something to hang on to.

The true king, in fact, verse 7, is coming with the clouds, coming in judgment on everyone, coming with

the power of the storm in his hand. He rides on clouds for fun. That's how great his power is.

Those who haven't bowed the knee to his greatness will wail. So awesome is his arrival.

So listen, John breaks out in praise of his greatness to him who, what does he say?

Think about what you expect him to say. To him who could crush you with one breath of his mighty justice.

Could have said that. Is it to him who can't stand the presence of lesser beings, so great is he?

To him who won't be bothered with the likes of us, so uniquely worthy is he? No.

No, it's none of those.

To him

Listen, you are beloved.

But it's not merely that you're loved. It's that he loves you. That's what makes being loved so

marvelous, right? When you get engaged, you don't go around just saying, I'm getting married. I'm

getting married. And someone says, to who? And you're like, I don't know, someone. I'm getting

married. No, that's not what you say. You say, I get to marry her. I get to marry him. He loves me.

That's what makes it wonderfully exciting.

See, the book of Revelation is not just any letter. It is a love letter capping off

the great love story of the Bible. Jesus wants you to know that the God who reigns over heaven and earth

and all of history and every corner of creation and reigns over every person who has ever lived,

that he loves you.

In case you get confused in Revelation at any point, would you come back to that?

Revelation is not a coded

treasure map where you're supposed to think that you're in an escape room

and every single piece of writing has some

coded message that if you could just figure it out, you could unlock

the door to life.

That's not the kind of letter it is. Now when you get

stuck in that loop, remember this is a love letter.

Not surprisingly with poetic imagery, okay? It may take a minute to understand,

but with a clear message you can count on

that the conquering king, the lion and the lamb

loves you. That's what he's telling.

But he does even more than say

that he loves you.

Some of us,

honest confession,

sometimes hear our spouses say,

you know, you talk so much.

Would you stop just saying you love me

and show me

for just a little while?

Jesus does that.

To him who

loves us

and

has freed us from our sins

by his blood,

with his blood

he purchased for God

a people from every tribe

and language

and people

and nation.

We were enslaved

to sin

in rebellion against the king

and instead of fighting against us

he fought for us

as he bought

our pardon

at the cost

of his precious

blood.

The king

doesn't just love you

a little.

Greater love

has no one

than this

that he lay down

his life

for his friends

and when we

were yet enemies

Christ

died

for us.

So we're free.

We are loved

and we are set free

but be honest

aren't we after all

pretty small

and meaningless

in the grand scheme

of the universe

and the millennia

of history

and don't we need

to remind ourselves

of that sometime?

I mean

that is one way

to look at it

and it can be

a helpful way

when you're tempted

to prideful self-importance

because it's not

untrue

from that viewpoint.

But that's not

the way Jesus

looks at you.

He has made us

a kingdom

priests

to his God

and Father.

forever.

Now don't get

confused.

He's the king.

The glory

and the power

are his

forever

and ever.

Amen.

No confusion

there.

But the king

includes

us.

Nothing else

could be more

significant

than this identity

that the king

bestows

on you.

Having been loved

and set free

by the king

you're brought

into his kingdom

like his people

Israel

in Exodus 19

and his New Testament

church

in 1 Peter 2.

We are royal

priests

in the king's

very house.

You know

what that means?

It means

that you are

invited in

to the closest

of relationships

with the king

himself

as his

very

priest

priest

it means

that whereas

on your own

you were

undeserving

you were his

enemy

who deserved

only to be

repelled

from his

presence

in his grace

because of his

great love

we can now

draw near

to him

and bring

acceptable

sacrifices

to him

as part of

his kingdom

work

all because

the great

sacrifice

has set us

free

has qualified

us

to be

priests

of the

great

king

can you

believe

that?

That you

would be

doing

vitally

important

work

for the

king

of the

universe?

That you

would be

close enough

to know

him

personally?

That means

that you're

tending

to a little

corner

of creation's

garden

you're

wiping

the nose

of a little

child

you're

generous

giving

to a

missionary

you're

sacrificial

loving

of the

left out

new kid

at school

this week

you're

obeying

your parents

when it

doesn't make

sense to

you

you're

repenting

to your

spouse

or your

friend

or your

child

from the

heart

those

little

things

it means

they are

so

significant

it means

that they're

a part

of the

everlasting

kingdom

of the

God

of all

of history

who is

and who

was

and who

is to

come

whose

kingdom

will have

no end

and neither

will your

sacrifices

when you

offer your

body

a living

sacrifice

to worship

him

you're a

priest

in his

kingdom

he loves

you

unbelievable

now that's

the story

of revelation

God

wins

grace

prevails

Jesus

reigns

you might

hear that

again

but it

needs to

matter

for you

it needs

to mean

so

you may

ache

under

the attacks

of evil

in this

world

you may

be suffering

right now

in what

feels like

an endless

cycle

of

meaningless

work

and painful

relationships

and traumatic

loss

you may

even be

martyred

for your

faith

but God

is bringing

his precious

purchased

people

to share

his

limitless

glory

and joy

in a

perfect

home

forever

so whatever

else you

think about

yourself

today

that you're

unloved

that you're

stuck

and trapped

and insignificant

you need

to remember

that you're

a vital

part

of King

Jesus

beloved

family

and universal

purpose

today

and through

eternity

you always

will be

we're going

to hear that

a lot

and he wants

you not

just to hear

that today

but he wants

you to taste

it

just think

for a minute

if you

could be

invited

by this

incredible

king

to eat

with him

then

maybe

just

maybe

you're more

significant

than you're

giving yourself

credit for

maybe you

maybe you

matter

to him

and as a

result

you matter

to the

whole

unending

story

of all

of history

you're

significant

in that

listen to

the words

of King

Jesus

speaking to

disciples

like John

and other

whose names

you don't

even remember

who failed

him

at times

but whom

he loves

all the

way

to the

cross

as he

headed

there

he said

with the

bread

that he

broke

and gave

to his

disciples

as I'm

ministering

in his

name

give this

bread

to you

he said

take and

eat

this is

my body

given

for you

do this

in remembrance

of me

and then

in the same

way

after supper

he took

the cup

and he

said

this cup

is the

new

covenant

in my

blood

which is

poured out

for many

for the

forgiveness

of sins

so whenever

you eat

this bread

and you

drink this

cup

you proclaim

the Lord's

death

until he

comes

because

he'll be

coming

he's that

one

the one

who is

who was

who is

to come

and he's

going to be

coming

for you

because he

loves you

and he gave

his blood

to free

you from

your sins

forever

friends this

is not the

table of

Southwood

or the

Presbyterian

church

this is

the king's

table

Jesus

invites you

to this

table

he invites

those he

loves

in spite of

their poor

performance

this week

he invited

you before

that

and he

invites you

now

after it

to come

and to

remember

that you've

been freed

from your

sin

by his

precious

blood

brought into

his family

to sit at

his table

and eat

with him

please come

as you

trust him

if that's

not your

hope

if you're

honestly

not sure

you need

Jesus

or you're

just not

willing

today

to bow

the knee

to him

to what

he says

your life

should look

like

to him

being the

king

then don't

come

and eat

what he

serves

this morning

but equally

don't

let these

elements

pass

without

considering

who he

offers

himself

as to

you

as the

one

true

king

who

actually

gives

his

life

to

rescue

you

forever

and to

bring

you

into

the

relationship

you

were

made

for

let me

pray

and then

we'll

come

and

celebrate

together

Jesus

that you

would love

us like

that is

beyond

what we

could

honestly

comprehend

today

thank you

for giving

us bread

and wine

to help

us

taste it

to help

our hearts

expand

the possibility

of what

it could

be like

to be

loved

by you

so

would you

use them

powerfully

in our

hearts

even now

thank you

for meeting

with us

we pray

in your

name

amen

for more

information

visit us

online

at

southwood.org

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