160. How Reading Revelation Is A Blessing

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 160,

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How the Book of Revelation is a Blessing. Everyone, and welcome back to the podcast.

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We are back in the Book of Revelation, and it's been our goal to make this most difficult book in the

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Bible understandable. And today, we're gonna continue along in our series by looking at how this book is not only a book that we can understand, but it's also a book that God promises to you and I that will become a blessing.

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And that's especially true of his first century church, that early church that was living between AD 30 and AD 70.

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And with that, let us jump into today's episode and let us see how the book of Revelation was specifically designed by God to be a blessing to your life.

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It's the only book in the Bible that was specifically designed and designated as a blessing.

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And that's what we're going to be talking about today. And we're going to be doing that in verse three of chapter one.

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This is what the text says. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it.

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Revelation one, three. Now with that, let us jump into part one, the redheaded step book.

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If the Bible were a family photo, Revelation would be the redheaded stepchild wedged awkwardly at the very edge of the photo, maybe even cropped out for the

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Christmas card. Sadly, for far too many Christians, this final book,

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Revelation, it feels like the embarrassing relative that nobody really wants to talk about.

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Nobody knows how to explain. Sort of like Christianity's uncle or cousin, Eddie, emptying his septic tank in the street in his bathrobe.

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Everyone can see that he's a little bit eccentric. Everybody can see that he's usually at the center of controversy.

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And yet he's not someone that we would invite into polite society. The book,

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Revelation, our cousin, Eddie, has been treated for centuries as if it were nothing more than a cryptic and chaotic epilogue to the end of the

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Bible. It was as if God, who is a master storyteller, forgot how to tell a good ending.

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And who can blame people for thinking that way, especially considering how many seminaries and professors and prophecy gurus and publishing houses and how many pastors and pulpiteers have turned this book into nothing more than Pan's labyrinth.

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You enter in its pages at your own peril. That's the way that it's preached, and that's the way that it's spoken about, if it's spoken of at all.

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There's many churches that just simply ignore it and won't speak about it. That's been many people's experience as well.

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Now, let's be honest. Revelation has been reduced by many people to this psychedelic fever dream.

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Winged beasts, cosmic dragons, world -ending plagues, fire in the skies, horsemen galloping through the streets with blood all the way up to their bridles.

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I mean, it's no surprise to me that most Christians treat this book like it's the biblical version of the bubonic plague.

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And why wouldn't they? The so -called scholars have twisted this book into a prophetic horoscope that applies to every major headline.

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You mark my words. The Pope just died this week. The Pope Francis. Mark my words.

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There's going to be a movement that says the new Pope is the Antichrist. I'm calling it now. There probably already is.

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You're probably already seeing people saying, the next Pope is going to be the Antichrist. I mean, a very popular

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Christian podcast called Ninjas or Butterflies just put out a video how this is the final

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Pope before doomsday. Like, this is ridiculous. These kind of doom and gloom influencers and scholars twist everything to fit some sort of headline.

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And what it does is it causes people panic and fear. It causes people a negative outlook of the kingdom of God.

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Causes people not to build. Causes people to live their entire life like they're living in a hotel room unwilling to really fully unpack the suitcase.

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And it causes people to be drawn to this book who are the kind of people who live in underground bunkers and who stay up late at night with bloodshot eyes looking through Reddit sub threads that have been basically infiltrated by CIA operatives who are spreading conspiracy theories online.

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The kind of people that every blood moon, every skirmish in the Middle East, every Russian tank that's on the move is a panic signal of the end.

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And this kind of fomenting of fear and fueling fatalistic tendencies and warping how people see the world has been going on for decades.

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Not just by the weirdos in their mother's basement, but by pulpits, by paperbacks, by seminaries that have played fast and loose with the apocalypse, which is supposed to, as we talked about before, meant to be a revealing, but yet they've turned it into a cinematic, psychedelic horror show that's a cryptic puzzle with an infinite number of possible solutions, or worse, a weapon that was meant to terrorize rather than it was meant to be an encouragement.

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That's the point, though. The book of Revelation wasn't written to induce paranoia. It wasn't written to be a schizophrenic vision.

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It was meant not to incite panic and dread and fear. In fact, the opposite is true.

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According to Jesus and the Apostle John, this book was written, it was specifically designed to bring

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God's people comfort and joy when they read it. It's the only book of the

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Bible that begins with a blessing that says, if you read this, you're going to be blessed. If you read this book out loud, you will experience blessings.

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Genesis doesn't do that. Psalms doesn't do that. Matthew doesn't do that. No other book of the

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Bible says that if you'll just open it and if you'll just read it, you will be blessed. And yet, considering how potent that blessing is, is it any wonder that the world, the flesh, and the devil have worked so hard to dampen and so hard to thwart this message and to leave it either as this weapon of fear or this mountain of confusion?

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Before a single seal in this book is broken, before a trumpet is blown, before a single beast crawls out of the fiery abyss,

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Jesus Christ at the very beginning of this book offers you and I a benediction, which just means blessing.

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And something you may not know is that the word blessing actually means happy and joyful. When it says that blessed are those who do

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X, Y, and Z, it means happy, joyful, content. It means that your life has peace.

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So the book of Revelation by its own admission is promising you pleasure and joy and happiness and contentedness and fulfillment, not confusion, not chaos, not panic, not dread, not avoidance, not waiting for a moment to take your

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Iron Man suit up to heaven. I mean, this is surely one of the most important things that we could possibly understand about this book as we begin our journey into this book is knowing that God wrote it for your joy and for your delight and for your comfort.

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And if you would just read it and read it out loud and make it a part of your regular reading, then it would be a blessing to you.

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And with that, the question that we really need to ask ourself is not, why is Revelation so horrifying and strange?

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That's the wrong question. The real question is why have we, and I'm talking about the church here, taken a book that is singularly focused upon encouraging us and strengthening us and giving us joy and turned it into the most outlandish, cartoonish book in all of the

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Bible? Why have we rewritten one of the major anthems of joy with such dour minor chords?

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Why have we taken a book that talks about the radiant and victorious bride of Christ and turned her into a pale faced emo girl in JNCOs and all black fishnet stockings with metal coming out of her highly emotive face?

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Metaphorically speaking, of course. What we, and by we, I mean the

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American church over the last 150 years have done to this most joyful book of blessings is criminal.

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And it's high time that we recover its reputation and its purpose for being the most blessed book in all of the

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Bible. Revelation is not a book of cursing. Does have punishment in it, does have judgment in it, but the crescendo of this book is a book of blessing.

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Here's an example from, you know, something I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever cite, which is the

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Lord of the Rings. When I think of the Lord of the Rings, I think of the story arc.

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I don't think about how, you know, there's so much pain and anguish and turmoil. I think about the king who now is reigning over Minas Tirith.

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I think about Frodo who's boarding the boat that's gonna head into Valinor. I think about how they won.

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There was victory. It's a joyful story because they triumph through adversity. Well, in the same way, the book of Revelation is not a book of defeat.

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It is a book of victory. It is not a book of collapse. It is a book of crescendoing glory.

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And today I want us to see that. But to do that, I want us to look at a couple of things. I want us to look at the structure of this blessing.

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I want us to look at the grammar and the language of this blessing. I want us to look at the societal setting of this blessing.

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And then in the end, I want you and I to see how that blessing still applies to us today.

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So with that, now let us get after that in part two, the structure of the blessing.

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Now, based on everything that we've heard from the left behinders and the late great planet earthers,

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Revelation would begin with Christians being vaporized just before a Tsar Bomba is dropped on Manhattan.

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And maybe the particulars are a little different. Maybe it's Shanghai, maybe it's Bangkok or wherever else. But most people, when they approach the book, they approach it with some sort of bracing themselves for calamity that's getting ready to happen.

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Earthquakes, blood moons, meteors crashing into the earth, some kind of rogue machines torching the sky and using human beings for batteries, matrixy.

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But instead, that's not how the book actually begins. The book opens up with a blessing, not terror, not judgment, not mayhem, a blessing, a sweet promise for a beleaguered first century church that God sees them and that God knows them and that God loves them in their suffering and that he's about to move on their behalf.

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Before the first trumpet blast, before the scroll is unrolled, before any of that, right before there's an opening breath of John's prophecy, we're told blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear the words and keep the words of this prophecy,

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Revelation 1 .3. This is so intentional, so much so that you may even be inclined to say that the book of Revelation was built upon a benedictorial blueprint or a blueprint of blessing.

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Let me explain. Right here in Revelation 1 .3, we hear the very first note in what will become a sevenfold symphony of blessing that echoes through the entire book.

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For instance, Revelation doesn't just contain a mere introductory blessing.

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The whole book is structured around blessing. There's seven benedictions in total, deliberately placed, perfectly spaced, like load -bearing walls in a cathedral or golden lamp stands in a temple and that number seven is no accident, not in this book.

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It's the number of divine fulfillment, the divine fullness, the perfect number, the number of perfection.

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Just as God built the old creation in seven days, so Revelation now is unfolding and unveiling a new creation that is being introduced to us, not with seven days, but seven blessings.

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These seven beatitudes frame the church's journey out of the ruins of Adam's world and into the resurrection world of Christ.

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These aren't throwaway lines and they're not just poetic decorations that are hung sparsely to make the place look a little nicer.

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No. These are purposeful statements of blessing that root the entire book start to finish in blessing.

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The book itself is not fundamentally about judgment, although there is judgment in the book.

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The book is fundamentally about joy. It's not about doom fundamentally.

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Yes, there's doom in there, but it's more specifically, its arc is trending towards dominion.

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It's not about the end of everything, but it's about the beginning of something new and something better. Here, right off the start, we get the first of seven benedictions that will hold and bind this book together like glue.

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Now, if you're interested, here are those seven benedictions. I'll tell them to you now, just so you'll know. Revelation 1 .3,

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blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and keep what is written in it for the time is near.

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This is a blessing for engaging with the word. This is a blessing for reading it, for hearing it, for obeying it.

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This is the gateway benediction that opens up all the benedictions in the book and it sets the tone for the book's call to the bride of Christ to be faithful even when the whore is not.

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The second benediction is Revelation 14 .13, which says, blessed are the dead who die in the

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Lord from now on, that they may rest from their labors for their deeds follow them.

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This promise is a promise to the persecuted saints and this is a promise that's reality now.

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Blessed are those who die in Christ. Blessed are those who, when they die, they go to be with Christ. That's why

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Paul says to live as Christ, to die as Christ, to die as gain, that your obedience lives on and follows you into eternity and we know from the rest of the

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Bible that when you die, your soul goes to be with the Lord. When Jesus returns, he unites your soul and your body back together again.

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The revelation is saying that blessed are those Christians who die even before they get their incorruptible body.

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Blessed are they because their soul is with Christ in heaven. We don't read that passage and say that that's somehow in the future.

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That's already true. Now, the third benediction, Revelation 16 .15,

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blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garments so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.

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This is a blessing to the early church to be faithful in the midst of persecution. This is echoing Jesus' teaching in the gospels that faithful, that they're faithful and they're blessed when they remain alert and when they remain clothed in his righteousness, which is true of the church today.

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We're not naked and ashamed like Adam. We are clothed with the robes of Christ. That's what this benediction is talking about.

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That's number three. Number four, Revelation 19 .9, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb.

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And you may say that this hasn't happened yet. Au contraire, mon frere, you are experiencing the marriage supper of the lamb when you go to the

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Lord's table every Sunday. The new covenant feast has begun. The true bride is called to the table and the

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Eden is restored when the true Adam feeds his wife Eve.

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Instead of Eve bringing the fruit to Adam, Jesus is bringing the fruit to his bride, the church, and he does that through his own body and his own blood.

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That's the next one. I think six is where we're at, Revelation 20, verse six. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection.

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Over those, the second death has no power. This is a benediction for all of those who are born again and who are gonna reign with Christ and who are marked out as the elect and the regenerate and they are untouchable by death's second sting.

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And then the, actually, sorry, I got confused earlier. That was number five. This is number six,

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Revelation 22, seven. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.

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Now, here we have a return to the theme of Revelation 1, 3. Blessed is the one who reads the book, hears the book, knows the book, does the book.

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And what this means is that the entire book of Revelation is bookended by blessing.

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That if you will obey this book, then you will have a blessing from this book. And that's extremely important because as we're gonna see as we move along,

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Revelation 1 through 3 is an encouragement to the first century church. Revelation 4 through 20 is the downfall of the apostate

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Jews. And then Revelation 21 through 22 is the future of the church, which is where we live right now, where we are serving the

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Lord Jesus Christ, feeding the nations with the gospel and all of that. So the blessings in this book, especially the end blessings, are blessings that happen for us,

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God's people, as we read and as we obey and as we listen to this book.

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Blessings do not belong to the spectators, but to the doers, to the hearers and the doers.

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Not just to the hearers only, as James says, but to the doers. And then the final blessing of this book happens in one of the final verses of this book,

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Revelation 22, 14. It says, blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter by the gates into the city, which is a blessing of eternal access to God.

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The final benediction opens the gate of Eden restored, where you're in a city that is a garden with a paradise, a new river of life, a new tree of life, where the city is the city of God and it's the inheritance of the pure who are the ones who worship

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Christ. All these blessings, all seven of them in the book of Revelation, trace the path of the disciple from suffering to glory.

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These blessings honor those who obey, those who are enduring, those who die well, those who die in Christ and those who remain pure and unstained by the world, those who wash their robes in the blood of the lamb, those who enter the marriage feast with the wedding garments on and those who will reign with Christ in his newly minted kingdom forever.

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The blessings are not for the cowards. They're not for the naysayers. They're not for the doom and gloomers.

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They are supplied for and committed to and sprinkled by, or sprinkled like Hansel and Gretel's bread comes through the forest to remind us of God's final inscripturated work.

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That's what makes the book of Revelation so beautifully upside down and counter to our own expectations.

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Instead of beginning the book with bullets and bombs and bloodshed and all of that, it begins with blessing.

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It doesn't start with a bow and arrow. It actually starts with a beatitude and that alone should reshape how we read this book and think about this book and approach this book moving forward.

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As we've said many times, Revelation is not a secret cipher code for survivalists.

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When the spirit of God inspired John on the Isle of Patmos to write this book, he did not intend to torment us with cryptic images that we could never possibly understand without some prophecy shaman to help us.

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He gave first century Christians a pastoral word to stabilize their trembling hearts, to steal their spines with courage as they were fighting for their lives, to give them resolve to endure the next few remaining years of the old world of temples and priests and sacrifices that were absolutely collapsing into the dust.

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I mean, over and over and over again, he called them to conquer. He called them to overcome.

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Revelation 2 .7, Revelation 2 .11, Revelation 2 .17, Revelation 2 .26. He said, to him who endures,

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Revelation 3 .10, to him who keeps my deeds until the end, Revelation 2 .26,

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to him who is faithful unto death, Revelation 2 .10. That's not a puzzle. He's writing to seven local churches in the first century telling them to overcome, to endure, to stay faithful, to keep going, not to tickle the fancies of modern day paranoias.

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This book is a call for the early church to preserve in their faithfulness.

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A benediction is going to be given to the bold. A promise of victory is going to be given to those who refuse to bow down to the beast of Rome and the

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Jerusalemite whore who rode atop it. And he told them plainly that you will be blessed if you simply read this book aloud in your worship services.

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You hear the words with reverence and you live them out in obedient faithfulness to God, Revelation 1 .3.

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And as we know from history, the early church did that. They read this book aloud.

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God blessed them and they endured. She didn't quit. She didn't give up. And because of her faithfulness, she witnessed the fall of the old covenant world, the rise of the new covenant kingdom that will never end.

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And she now, today, 2 ,000 years later, is still that new Jerusalem city whose gates are always open, whose lamb is reigning forever.

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And because of that first generation's faithfulness, we are now the beneficiary of her blessings 2 ,000 years later as a church that is still preaching the gospel, still handing out the fruit from the tree of life, still pointing people to the water of life, which is

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Christ. And that leads us to part three, the language of blessing.

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Now, before we break this down even further, we need to remember something really critical here that this book was written to first century

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Christians. It was not written to us. Revelation was not postmarked to us, but it was preserved in the

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Bible for us. That's a key distinction. You see, before we can get to the application that the

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Holy Spirit intended this book to give to you and I 2 ,000 years after it was written, we need to first get to the meaning of the book.

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For instance, you can't begin the process of digestion until you first started chewing.

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Well, in the same way, you can't get to the application until you've understood the meaning. The meaning applies to the people that this book was written to in its first century context.

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The application is for all Christians at all times to understand and find a blessing, which as we're gonna see later on, there is a beautiful blessing this book gives to you and I.

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But before we get there, we gotta remember that it was first delivered to these seven churches in Asia Minor, Thyatira, Philadelphia, Pergamum, Ephesus, Smyrna.

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These churches in Asia Minor were the intended audience of John's revelation,

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Jesus's revelation to John. And these churches were going through some of the most turbulent times and periods in all of redemptive and church history.

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Again, the old covenant world was collapsing. Everything they knew about how to worship

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God was failing. The temple was getting ready to be destroyed. The priesthood was gonna be gone.

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And you have people who are literally wondering, how do I know God in this situation?

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And at the same time, Jesus is talking about a new covenant world and that he's gonna be the temple. He's gonna be the sacrifice.

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He's gonna be the priest. He's gonna be the feast. And you've got everything that the old covenant represented now being centralized around Jesus so that he's now the center of the orbit of the entire world.

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This new covenant was rising even as the old covenant was collapsing. And these believers were the first generation to actually walk through this seismic covenantal and redemptive shift.

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So with that, the blessings that are being communicated were real, they were tangible, and they went all the way down into the bones of this book, which are the very words that were originally penned by John to these first seven churches.

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So if we wanna understand the blessing, then we need to understand the words that John actually even used to communicate them.

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So John says this, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy and are blessed.

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

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Revelation 1, 3. Now, I wanna encourage you before we dive into the grammar and the

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Greek and the syntax and all of that, just like a scuba diver straps on an oxygen tank,

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I want you to remember that this does not need to be suffocating. Many people, myself included, are intimidated by grammar.

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I even had a Greek professor in seminary say that Greek, he's a Greek professor, and he said,

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Greek is like underwear. Everybody should have it, but you shouldn't show it to anybody else, which

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I thought was a little weird. A lot of us are intimidated by grammar. A lot of us are intimidated when your pastor comes up and says, well, the

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Greek word is, yeah, I get it. But for a moment,

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I just want us to take a deep breath for a second, because you will see that once you understand the words and what's going on underneath the surface of these words, that the exquisite ecosphere of life is bubbling under the surface, just like a scuba diver can go down and see these beautiful coral reefs with all of this life teeming under the surface.

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As we look underneath the surface of these words, we're going to see how blessed John actually is intending to communicate.

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So hang tight in this section. Some of you are not going to love the Greek. They're not going to love the grammar, but hang tight, not like someone who's on the edge of the cliff.

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Getting ready to fall. Hang tight like a child who's sitting on a chair at Christmas, hanging tight to the arms of the chair because she's so excited that she's getting ready to receive this

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Christmas blessing and a blessing in the most unexpected way. Hang tight in that way.

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Because once you see the words, they really do let you know just how blessed God wants you and I to be as we study this book.

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And the first word that we're going to be looking at is the word Markerios. The first word in the verse of Revelation 1 .3

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is the Greek word for blessed, which is Markerios. Now it means blessed for sure, but not in the shallow sense of feeling lucky or having an easy life or you got your coffee order right at Starbucks and now you're hashtag blessed.

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Like that's not what it means. The blessing comes straight from God. It's a blessing that means deep and lasting satisfaction.

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It means full of joy. Even when your life is hard, it's where it's infused with purpose.

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It means that God sees you and that God approves of you and God delights in you. Even in the fires of the furnace of life, you find purpose and meaning and blessing.

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That's what this word means. This is the same word that Jesus used in the Sermon on the

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Mount when he said, blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who mourn and blessed are those who are persecuted.

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Matthew 5 .3 through 11. It's a word for the faithful who were suffering, not the powerful, not the comfortable, but for those who are holding fast to God while the world around them is collapsing.

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When John wrote the Revelation, the early Christians were being hunted down, not by the

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Romans yet, but by their own countrymen, the Jews. The unbelieving Jewish people had rejected

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Jesus and now they were persecuting the church. Families were being torn apart. Christians were being thrown out of the synagogues, which was the very center of Jewish life.

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It was your culture. So imagine the entire culture throwing you out. They were being arrested.

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They were being mocked. They were being ridiculed. They were being killed. And in the middle of all of that storm of persecution,

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God was telling them, Markerios, you are blessed.

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Not because you're not going through pain and not because your pain is trifle or light or meaningless or purposeless, but because God is with you.

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You're blessed because God is with you. The rich Jews, the angry

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Jews, the ones who are murdering you, they're cursed because I've abandoned them.

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And even you in your suffering, even in your suffering, you are blessed. Not because of your material circumstances, not because of the lightness and the comfortability, not because of your wealth and your riches and status and everything else.

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You're blessed because I am with you and I will be your God and you will be my people.

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They're blessed because the lamb was reigning on his throne. And that should give them comfort because if the lamb is reigning, then those who are attacking them are now his enemies.

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And if he has all power and all authority in heaven and on earth, they ought to be scared.

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Because to be his enemy means you will be crushed, which is what happened. They felt blessed because their names were written in the lamb's book of life.

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They felt blessed because they were a part of a kingdom that could never be shaken, that could never be ended. To be mercurious and blessed is not to escape your suffering.

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It's to be held by God in the midst of it and to rest in his providence and his control and his sovereignty.

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It's to know that your tears are not wasted. It's to know that your faith is not forgotten.

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It's to know that your endurance is not in vain. That's why revelation opens with a blessing.

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Before the first trumpet blast, before the first seal is broken, before the bowls are being poured out, God looks upon his beloved church and he says, you are blessed.

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Why? Because I'm with you. Because you obey me like a son obeys his father.

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And because you're standing firm when everything around you is shaken and like a good father, he looks at his child and he says,

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I'm proud of you and you're blessed. This blessing was not a future tense blessing.

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Imagine that. Imagine the book of revelation was written like many of the dispensational say entirely for the future.

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And God looks right at the persecuted church that were being pressed, that were being persecuted, they were being slaughtered, that were being all these things.

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And he says, blessed are those in the 21st century who read this book, not you.

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I deal with your pain, whatever. But somebody later is gonna be blessed.

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I'm gonna really bless them. Imagine what that would say. God doesn't do that.

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God looks right at that first century church that were being pressed but not crushed, persecuted but not forsaken, slaughtered but still victorious, faithful in the days of faithlessness of the

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Jews and he says, you are blessed and you are not destined for tragedy but you are destined for triumph.

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And the same is true for every Christian today who walks in their footsteps.

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To be Markerios blessed is not necessarily to be rich.

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It's not to be comfortable. It's not to get fat on moon pies and RC Cola or Coke or whatever else.

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It's to belong to the lamb. It's to live under the smile of heaven even when the earth is raging around you.

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So I want you to hear this blessing and I want you to take this blessing to heart.

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You, if you are in Christ, are blessed. You cannot be more wealthy even if you had all the wealth in all the world.

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If you have Christ, you have everything and if you don't have Christ, though you have all the riches this world could offer, you actually have nothing.

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That's why the first century church was blessed because she knew God. She heard the voice of Christ and she kept his word.

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That's the first word that we're gonna look at. Second word, it's a phrase, ha -ena -genoskan, which means the one who reads aloud.

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Now in those days, a young man, maybe he was a father, maybe he was even an elder in the local church, but definitely someone who could read because that literacy was really low at this point in church history.

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A man would stand up in the middle of the worship service. In the middle of church, he would stand up and he would read from the scroll.

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The church had gathered on the Lord's day and they had done so quietly. They had done so under the threat of death.

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I mean, think about the difference. You and I stroll into church in a car, in safety, with our piping hot coffee in our hand, with our beautifully bound leather

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Bible, and with every luxury the world has to offer, we bumble into church with one minute to spare.

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These people didn't have those blessings. They didn't own a copy of the Bible. They certainly didn't have a

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Starbucks or a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner. And they had to secretly walk through the streets of whatever town that they were in so that they wouldn't be noticed going to church.

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Because if they were noticed going to church, they'd probably be killed. They didn't have a building. They had no band.

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They certainly didn't have a fog machine. They had no social clout. All they had was Christ.

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All they had was Christ in one another and the word. And as the church service started 2 ,000 years ago in all of these various little towns across Asia Minor and all across the ancient world, the room would fall silent because someone was going to read to them the word of God.

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That's what captivated their hearts. They didn't need anything else but the word. And when the word was read, they went quiet.

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They held their children's in their laps. They held hands with one another. Some of them were still bearing fresh bruises from their beatings the week before.

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Others had spent the whole week weeping over the loss of a job because their boss found out that they were a

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Christian. Some lost their homes and were kicked out of their homes because they were being punished for their faith in Christ.

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Some of them were imprisoned and just got out. And this is the first church service that they were able to attend in weeks. But when the scroll was opened, everyone in that congregation's eyes were lifted.

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And they all leaned in and they listened to the reader. And the reader said, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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That's what John meant when he said, blessed is the one who reads aloud. He's not just talking to you and I.

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He's talking about the pastor, the elder. He's talking about the man who stands up in the midst of the secret assembly of church people who were meeting together under the threat of death.

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And he's saying, blessed is that man. Blessed is that one who reads aloud the words of this revelation.

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That's what anagnoskan means. It's not silent, quiet reading. It's public proclamation.

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This is not private study. This is not prayer calls at time. This is public scriptural reading in the

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Lord's day gathering. This is not just a man who's reciting words. This is a man who is raising up a banner.

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He was declaring Christ's victory. He's reading the words from this prophecy that showed them that the threats that they were receiving from the synagogues and from the

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Caesars meant nothing in comparison because as we'll see in verse five, Jesus is the king over all the kings over all the earth.

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Most people in that room could not read those words. And at this time, scrolls were very, very rare and they were very expensive.

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According to modern day measurements, the book of Romans, if you were to produce this in the first century, would be $20 ,000 essentially.

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It was expensive. And because it was so expensive, you wouldn't even put punctuation marks in the text.

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You wouldn't put spaces between the words. You would jam as much as you possibly could into this text with an endless stream of capital letters just so that no one would get confused.

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I mean, it took training in order to read. It took patience in order to read. It took boldness in order to read.

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It took a effort of love, love for Christ, love for his people, love for the truth that no one could silence you.

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And this man who stood up in the midst of the congregation, wasn't trying to be a hero.

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He was just trying to be faithful. He was doing what needed to be done. And when he read that,

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John says of him, he is blessed. Not because he felt brave.

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He probably felt scared, but he was blessed because he showed up.

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He wasn't blessed because he had power. He probably had none. He was blessed though because he was reading the word.

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And with every word that he read, he fed that flock. He lifted his eyes up to the persecuted.

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He shepherded the saints through the fire and heaven was smiling down on him as he read the words of this prophecy of Jesus Christ.

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And so it is today. Every time someone stands in the midst of the assembly of God's people on the

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Lord's day and reads the word aloud, whether in the pulpit or even in the living room, in a prison cell or around the kitchen table, we join in a legacy of Bible reading, public

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Bible reading that goes back 2000 years. We step into the stream of the faithful witnesses who would not bow, who would not bend, and who would not be silenced.

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When we read the scriptures, we stand on the shoulders of the first century giants who even though the pages of their

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Bible was stained at times with their own blood, they still stood immovable, unshakable, and they read the words of God to the people of God and they are blessed.

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And when we read his word today, we are blessed. That's the second phrase. The third phrase is hoi akumtes, which means those who hear and those who receive.

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Now, it's not just the ones who reads the words who are blessed, but it's also those who hear and those who listen to the words who are blessed as well.

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I want you to imagine a small group of Christians huddled together in the first century inside of a home, inside of a dark living room, trying their best not to alert the authorities of what they're doing.

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They're meeting to worship Christ. And maybe they finished a long week of work.

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Maybe they're scared that the Roman guards are gonna come. Maybe they're scared that some of their

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Jewish friends who know what they're doing are gonna tell the synagogue leaders and the Pharisees and they're gonna be found out.

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And they're sitting there with all of the pressures of the world bearing down on top of them.

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And the man stands up and he begins to read. And if you were there, all of your anxieties would have faded because you know, you would have known in that moment that God's word,

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God's message to you that was written on the fingertips of the apostle

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John is now being read. And it would have been the most important reading of your life.

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You wouldn't have been distracted. You wouldn't have had phones. You wouldn't have been yawning.

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Your eyes would have been wide open. And the Bible says that as you were listening to that text, you were blessed.

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The Greek word here is hoi akountes which doesn't mean that they just heard the words. It doesn't mean that the audio sound waves just got inside their ears.

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It means that they received them, that they brought them down into them, deeply down into their hearts.

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That's the same kind of hearing that God calls for in the Old Testament when he says, hear O Israel, the

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Lord your God is one. It's a kind of hearing that leads to trusting, believing, accepting, loving.

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It's a hearing that leads to action. And Revelation was written to be heard in that way.

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Not just studied like a textbook and not just debated like a puzzle.

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And honestly, this is why I want this series to be more sermonic. I don't wanna just teach lectures on the book of Revelation like a nerd in an ivory tower.

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I could do that. I am a nerd and I like ivory. So like I could totally do that. But this verse tells us that this book is a blessing when it is read and when it is heard, when it is spoken out loud and when it is believed in the heart.

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So I want this series to be about that. I want this series to be about blessing you by me reading this word to you that John wrote 2000 years ago.

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And I want it to be a blessing to you as you hear it, believe it, receive it and obey it.

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It was meant to be heard with reverence and readiness. As if Jesus himself were speaking directly to you.

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When I'm reading you these words, I'm reading you the words of Christ. I'm reading you the words of Jesus, your savior, the one who died on the cross and bled for you.

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The one who rose from the grave and ascended into heaven and who is now king of the universe. When I read you the words of this book,

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I'm reading you quotations from Christ himself. And in those early churches, they heard it like that.

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They heard it and they listened with everything that they had and they knew that our king has spoken a greater word than Caesar.

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Our king has more authority than the Jews. And as they waited over those years leading up to AD 70, those same people who listened to God's word and were faithful and obeyed, also heard the news of the fall of Babylon, spiritual

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Jerusalem, the death of the old world, the ending of the temple, the priest and all of those things.

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They heard it with their own ears. And you have to think that in that moment, every church service where they read

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Revelation 1 came crashing back over their heart. And they said, thank God, it's true.

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It's fulfilled. And he does love us and we are blessed.

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Their hearing wasn't just in their ears, brothers and sisters, it was in their hearts. And it gave them strength to stand when they were tempted to give up and tempted to quit.

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Today, a lot of people read Revelation with charts and with theories and with fear and with all the wrong motives.

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You got to get into the heart and into the mind of the first century believer who listened to this book so that they could have courage, who listened to this book so that their tears would be wiped away, who listened to this book so that their doubts would be turned to faith.

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They weren't trying to guess the future and they weren't trying to decode some, some European event.

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They were choosing to listen to this book and to follow

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Jesus into the hardest moment of the church's history. And Jesus says that the way that they listened to this book meant they were blessed.

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That's the kind of hearing that still today brings a blessing. When you listen on the edge of your seat to the word of God, blessed are those not who figure out the symbols, blessed are those who write a prophecy book, blessed are those who make people paranoid and afraid, no, blessed are those who hear, blessed are those who listen, blessed are those who obey the word of God, who listen for the marching orders of their general, blessed are those who hear the voice of their king, who met the words that he gives them, move their hearts into action, who let it shape their life and who let it make them bold, blessed are those today, even today, who read the

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Bible, listen to the Bible, hear the Bible in that way, who let it make you bold, who like iron, you know how you get fire into the iron, you put the iron into the fire until the fire gets in it, you can't bend iron until you let the fire get inside of it and then when it's glowing red hot, then you can bend it and you can shape it, that's what the word of God is meant to do for you and I, it's meant to get down into our soul so that we're now malleable and we're now moldable in the hands of our glorious king because the blessing, because the blessing of revelation doesn't fall just on the curious, it falls on the obedient and the courageous, it falls on those who listen and who hear and who do and that blessing still stands today right now for everyone who will hear these words of this book and hold on to them for dear life and obey what

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Jesus says. That's the third phrase. The fourth phrase is teruntes, those who keep and who guard and who treasure and this brings us to the very heart of the blessing, the turning point where God doesn't just bless those who read the word and he doesn't just bless those who hear the word, he blesses those who keep it.

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This word teruntes comes from the Greek word tereo which means not just to obey, it means to guard something.

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It means to protect it, it means to treasure it, it means to be like a soldier who is guarding something for his king.

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It's like a watchman and a, it's like a prison guard who's watching a criminal and who's guarding that criminal, making sure that they don't escape.

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The attitude that we're supposed to have towards the word of God is one like someone who is guarding something that is precious or guarding something that we are not gonna let escape.

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We guard the word because we want it hidden in our heart. We guard the word like a parent who's holding onto a child tightly in a moment of danger.

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We hold on, we keep and we guard this word, not out of cold religious obedience, but out of love and out of loyalty to our savior and here is something utterly amazing.

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In the original Greek, the words hear and keep are connected by the same article.

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That means they rise and they fall together. In other words, to truly hear God's word is to keep it.

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You can't, if you're not keeping God's word, if you're not treasuring God's word, if you're not living by God's word, then you really have not heard it.

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The sound waves have entered your brain, but they didn't trickle down into your heart and into your hands.

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You have not heard it unless you keep it. You can't separate the two and that's what the early

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Christians got right. When they heard the book of Revelation, they didn't hear this cosmic drama where they would say, wow, you know, that's really interesting and they certainly didn't hear it like any moment now that we're gonna see the

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Antichrist and did you know that on the monster can, there's the

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Hebrew letter Vav, which stands for six in numerology. So there you have the M is made out of three

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Vav, 666 monster drink is a part of the beast world order and they certainly didn't look at Elon Musk and say, oh, because he put a computer chip in a chimpanzee, now this is the mark of the beast.

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They didn't do any of that stupid, crazy, foolish newspaper exegesis. They simply looked at the word of God and they said, this is mine and I believe it and I love it and now

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I've got to live it and if I need to and if I have to and if I face the bullet for it, if I'm killed for it, so be it.

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They looked at the word, they love the word, they heard the word, they obeyed the word even unto the point of death and that my friends is what it means to be blessed.

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When you hear the word, when you love the word, when you obey the word and you're willing to die for the word.

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That's what John is saying down in the words of this passage that those who read it and those who hear it will be blessed.

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That was true in the first century and it's also true today and that takes us to part four, the significance of blessing.

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Revelation 1 .3 wasn't whispered in the quiet halls of a monastery or mused in the security of a study.

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It didn't float down from heaven like a lullaby. It cracked like a thunderclap across the soul of the church standing at the covenantal crossroads of collapse and cosmic renewal.

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The blessing was not the flicker of a candle in the night, it was the ignition of a furnace.

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It was these words, blessed is the one who reads, blessed is the one who hears, blessed is the one who keeps, that fell not on a coffee -sipping church in cushioned seats in modern

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America, but war -torn saints whose hands still bore the scars of synagogue stones and Roman whips.

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Jerusalem, at this point, although it believed it was healthy and vibrant and good, was on life support.

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The temple smelled like putrid sulfur from hell and the people of God were navigating the death rattle of the old world while still clutching to the newborn breath of this new covenant reality.

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So why would God bring a book like this with blessing? Why would he lead not with warnings or woes or with signs in the skies and with beasts on the prowl?

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Why would God begin the book with a blessing? Because our

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God is a good father and a good father doesn't push his children out into the battle until he's first placed his hands on their shoulder and said, you are mine, you are seen, you are favored, you are loved.

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That's what this blessing was. It was a covenantal seal of God's fidelity and his love.

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It wasn't a motivational poster, it was marching orders with a promise that was sewn into the very hem of the garment.

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The benediction came first because the battle was about to begin and God wanted his people to realize that you are blessed, walk through the battle faithfully.

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The saints needed that information before they got to the formation, the battle.

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They needed that identification with the risen

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Lord. They needed to know that heaven was not displeased with him. They needed to know that the lamb was still with them.

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They needed to know that God was going to carry them through the fires and the floods and the curses and the plagues.

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They needed to know that God was with them. The blessing wasn't spoken in the context of comfort, it was applied to them in the middle of conflict, in the middle of crisis and the blessing changed everything.

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These were not armchair theologians. These were insurgents living under the constant threat that their faith had brought upon them and yet they gathered in basements faithfully, in caves joyfully, in cramped upper rooms exuberantly.

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They gathered to hear this book, not because they wanted the headlines that was happening in Rome or Jerusalem, but because they needed hope.

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They received this book like the underground marching orders of an army who just heard from their general as they were hiding beneath the shadow of enemy lines waiting to take over after the enemy had fallen.

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They didn't read Revelation like it was a roadmap to escape. They read it like it was a rope that they needed to cling to and hang on to while the world around them was crumbling.

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See, when the scroll was open and the words rang out, something glorious happened.

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The air changed, the weight that was on their backs was lifted, the spirit was bearing witness, the blessing spoken by God himself was settling down over top of them like morning dew in a desert night and it wasn't just spiritual, it was tactical.

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The ones who heard and who kept this prophecy didn't just find a kind of inner peace like some

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Shaolin monk in the middle of the mountains. No, they found physical peace. They found deliverance.

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They fled Jerusalem before Titus' legions actually sealed the gate. They saw the blessing, they interpreted it, and they fled the city because they knew what

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Jesus was saying. They remembered what Jesus was warning them in Luke 21, Matthew 24, Mark 13.

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They followed the prophetic breadcrumbs all the way out of Jerusalem and into Pella and they lived and the blessing had legs.

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It moved their feet. It redirected their families. It helped them hang on in those final moments and when the moments finally came to an end, when the sands finally exited the hourglass and Rome surrounded the city of Jerusalem, they fled.

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And they fled because they knew what Jesus said. They knew the word. The word encouraged them, the word strengthened them, and the word caused them to flee at just the right moment.

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And that tells us a whole lot about what this book actually stands for. It's not just eschatology.

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It's not just fantastical imagery. It's a book for the first century church to read, to be encouraged for their own survival.

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It doesn't float ever so slightly above every era of human history. No, it was grabbing history, the first century history by the throat and it was helping our brothers and sisters 2000 years ago know how to survive in a world that was turning against them, like a rabid dog in its final moments of thrashing.

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I mean, this is the magnitude of this benediction. This is not abstract for them.

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It's not metaphorical for them. It's not locked in the vault of the first century memory for them. It was and still is the roaring assurance of divine favor upon those who align their lives with the lamb.

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Revelation 1 .3 is the crown jewel of the book. It is the crown placed on the heads of the obedient before the first beast ever growls.

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It's heaven's tattoo inked across the hearts of the faithful ones before Babylon staggers in her whoredom.

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It's the assurance that those who read, that those who heard and those who obeyed and kept the word weren't merely gonna survive the apocalypse of Jerusalem.

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They were going to reign. In the next verse, we're gonna talk about next week, they're gonna be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

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This was the church in a moment of new Sinai -like glory.

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Not a mountain shaking filled with smoke anymore and stone, but a scroll carried by a man in chains.

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Not words thundered by Yahweh to a trembling nation, but now the words from the risen

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Christ to a remnant bride. And as that scroll was open, they didn't just receive the message.

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They received the identity that it was communicating. They were no longer slaves.

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They were free. They were no longer powerless. They had power because of Christ. They were defined by the

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Lamb's voice, by the Lamb's word, by the Lamb's reward. And this blessing was the fire in their lungs that kept them going.

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It was the steel in their spine that kept them moving and it worked.

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It worked. The temple fell in 8070. The city burned to the ground.

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The smoke and its ash was wafting up to heaven. The beast collapsed. The old age died gasping in the dust.

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But the church, the church rose. The church soared. The church was vindicated.

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The church was victorious, alive. They were the ones who stood on the other side of the end of the world, as it were the end of a world, as living proof that God was with them, that he had not abandoned them, and that their blessing was real.

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Their homes may have been turned to ash. Their families were scattered, but their faith was immovable.

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Their nation had been destroyed, but they were now a new nation. The priest had been abrogated, but now they were the priest.

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And now they worshiped at the true temple because of the true high priest, Jesus Christ. Everything that was lost in the old covenant was gained in Jesus, so that now he became their blessing.

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And for 2000 years, we've lived in a kingdom of blessing with a king who gives blessings, who is reigning now.

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That's the brilliance of Revelation 1 .3. It's not just sentimentality or a footnote upon a dusty moment in history.

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It was the battle cry of a church that was like a moth in a, where there was like a worm in a cocoon getting ready to come out of its chrysalis and become that butterfly that would be unleashed upon the world, and it would fly and it would soar.

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It was a moment where the church was hanging on for dear life and yet coming out of it.

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They were the only ones left. And they were the ones, not the

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Jews, not Jerusalem, not Israel, because there's a new Israel, a true Israel of God who are now under the banner of God's blessings.

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We have to stop asking, why did God write such a fantastical book?

01:07:58

We have to actually start marveling, how could he have done it any other way? In the first century world, when these people were struggling,

01:08:07

God gives them a blessing. He puts his promise on them right up front, a king places his oath before his order, a shepherd marks the sheep before he leads them into the valley.

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And so God blessed the church loudly, lovingly and unforgettably before the first seal was broken, before the first trumpet was sounded, before the first judgment dropped, he gave them blessing because he knew what they were gonna face.

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He knew how they were gonna be tempted. He knew how they were gonna wanna quit and give up. He knew it all and he knew it and he blesses them.

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And now, as we end our time in today's episode, and as we've seen the blessing that happened in the first century,

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I want us to see now clearly how this is also a blessing for us today.

01:09:02

Because so few people actually look at the book of Revelation like it's a book of blessing. We look at it like it's a book of confusion, like it's a book of curses, like it's a book of fantastic imagery.

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The futurists look at this book as if it's all about future calamity. And many preterists look at this book as though it's only about the events that happened in the first century.

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But I wanna tell you today that if you'll read this book, love this book and obey this book, if you'll hear this book, if you'll take this book into you, if you'll digest what it is saying, then you as well and your family and your church and your neighborhood and your world come under the blessings of God, because he said, blessed are those who read this book and listen and hear and do what it says.

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And with that, let us go to our final section for today, which is part five, why the blessings still stand.

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Now the blessings of Revelation 1 .3 was not just applied to the first century church as we've alluded to already.

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It's for the church of all ages. It's not just a limited time offer attached to a temporary crisis.

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It was a covenantal promise that if you will hear the word, love the word and do the word, then you will be blessed.

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And it still applies to everyone who reads and hears and keeps the word today. The circumstances have changed.

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The judgment has already fallen. The temple is already been judged.

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The old covenant has already passed away. Revelation four through 20 has already happened.

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And yet the blessing still stands and it remains unchanged, unvarnished, unblemished, undiminished and fully alive.

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Because the blessing was never rooted in crisis.

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It was rooted in Christ. God didn't front load the book of Revelation with a blessing simply to comfort a suffering people.

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Yes, he did that. Amen. And it did. But he also established a pattern of blessing.

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He established a pattern for all who would walk in the light of the gospel of the lamb after the smoke of Jerusalem cleared to walk in that same blessing forever.

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And the structure of Revelation proves this. The book begins with the blessing and it ends with the blessing.

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Remember, Revelation four through 20 is the judgment of the apostate Jews. Well, the blessings occur, most of them in fact, in Revelation one and Revelation 22.

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And that way, in that seven fold benedictory pattern that scattered blessings all throughout the book of Revelation like ivory columns that hold up the

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Parthenon, these blessings aren't random. They're deliberate.

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And they are for us, the church, because we aren't just living in the shadow of a coming kingdom like our brothers and sisters 2000 years ago.

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We're living in that kingdom today. We're living in New Jerusalem. We're living under the kingship of Jesus Christ.

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We are the ones who every Lord's day stand at the foot of the tree of life and feed the nations for their healing with the gospel.

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We are in the New Jerusalem, which by the way, in Revelation 21, if you just wanna skip to the end because it's gonna take us a long time to get there,

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Revelation 21 says that the angel took John up to a great high mountain to show him the city, the bride.

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The bride is the church. And if he takes him up to a tall mountain to show him the city, the bride.

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What John is saying is the New Jerusalem is the bride, is the church.

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We're not waiting for the kingdom to come. We are in the kingdom now.

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And our king is reigning now. And we are living in his rule now.

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Revelation is not the description of, Revelation 21 and 22 especially is not the description of heaven and eternal state.

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It's the picture of the church after Jesus's victory over the apostate

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Jews. We're the city whose gates never close. We are the temple that is filled with the spirit.

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We are the place where God dwells on earth, where he is our God and we are his people and he loves us and cares for us.

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We are the people whom the river of life flow out of our gatherings that brings the gospel fruit to the nations for their healing.

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Revelation doesn't call us to look up at the heavens and wait for an escape. It calls us to look around us and work to feed the nations with the gospel, to bring the water of life to the world.

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We are not a church in retreat. We are a church that is meant to be world changers.

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We are a church that's meant to bring restoration. We're a church that's meant to bring the gospel that saves. We're a church that's meant to take the good fruit that Jesus has given us and distribute it to the world.

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We are a church that's meant to take the blessings of Christ and give them to a world that is dying apart from him.

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That same blessing that carried the early church into relationship with the

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Jews where they were preaching and they were being murdered for it where they were giving the gospel to the Romans and they were being persecuted for it.

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The church throughout all generations has done this. We take the gospel to the world whether they hate us or not because we know that in that work, we will be blessed.

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The kingdom will advance. The gates of hell will not stand against us and the world will come under the dominion of Jesus Christ.

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That's why the blessing still matters because we are still called today to read this book, not with fear but with faith.

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We're still called to keep this book and obey this book without hesitation but with holy confidence.

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And when we read Revelation today, whether it's in church or whether it's in our home or whether it's in our car ride, when we read

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Revelation today, we are participating in the kingdom of Jesus and in his ongoing victory.

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We're not analyzing a map of what God might do at some point in the future. We are walking in the aftermath of what

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God has already done in the past and where he has brought us today in the present. The blessing stands, brothers and sisters, because the war has already been won and the battles that we are facing today, we still have to trust the lamb with.

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It stands because the Christ, the risen one, the lamb of God is already sitting on his throne.

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It stands because the church isn't a scattered remnant anymore. The church exists in every time zone and every latitude, every longitude, every country on earth has

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Christians. If you think about the world map as a bakery and in the back of the bakery, they've got all the little lumps of bread.

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Every one of those lumps of bread is a country in this metaphor. Every single one of them has at least a

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Christian in it, a microscopic little atom of leaven that will eventually work its way through the entire lump.

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America may fall, the world may look different by the end, but what we know for sure is that this church will win.

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We are a royal priesthood. We are a holy nation. We are a global body.

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We are empowered by the spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead and ordered the universe.

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Do we think we lose? We've been commissioned to disciple the nations.

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The spirit of God will be with us until we do. Revelation is not a book that blesses the fearful.

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It's not a book that blesses the coward. It's not a book that blesses the doomsdayers. It's a book that blesses the faithful.

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It's a book that blesses those who refuse to compromise and bow their knee. And it's a book who blesses those who remain at work in obedience to the word.

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It's a book that blesses those who proclaim Christ as King in a world that's still learning what that means.

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So yeah, the temple's fallen. Babylon has collapsed. The whore has been put down.

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Rome is gone, but the church of Jesus Christ still stands and the benediction that he gave in Revelation 1 .3

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remains. It's not fading, it's flourishing. It belongs to the church today because we are the living inheritors of the promises of God.

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We are the ones who are reigning with Christ now. We are the ones who are carrying his gospel now.

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We are the ones who are inheriting the earth now. We are the ones who are having generational blessings now.

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We are the ones who are raising up children who will take it further than we took it now. The command hasn't changed.

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The calling hasn't changed. The word hasn't changed. The blessing hasn't changed. Read it, obey it, hear it, keep it, and you will be blessed.

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And with that, brothers and sisters, I want us to end by going to our conclusion.

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Brothers and sisters, we have come to the end of our episode on Revelation 1 .3,

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but we've not come to the end of the blessings because this blessing was never meant to be locked in the vault of history.

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It was never meant to only be relocated to the first century. It was never designed to be a gentle introduction to a terrifying book.

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It was, from the very beginning, meant to be the ground beneath the church's feet.

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The foundation of the church is blessing. The foundation of our relationship with Christ is blessing.

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It's the blessing under our feet. It's the banner over our head. This blessing's not the preface, it's the platform.

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It's the theological framework of the book of Revelation. It's the spiritual fuel of the first century church, and it's the ongoing anthem of every believer in every generation at every time until Jesus Christ finishes his work of victory.

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The lamb reigns. The temple's gone. The war's been won. The kingdoms of this world have already become the kingdoms of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. The blessing that sent the first church into persecution and fire now sends us, the post -AD 70 church, into power, faithfulness, fruitfulness to the ends of the earth.

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The benediction that launched a generation of martyrs now commissions a generation of builders.

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That's us. This is not a different church than the first century church.

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We are a part of that same church. We are living in the latter chapters of the same redemption story that began when

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Jesus rose from the dead, that culminated in Revelation 21 when

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Jerusalem was destroyed. Revelation 1 -3, Revelation 22 -14, those aren't ancient relics that are meant to sit in a museum somewhere, and they're certainly not future puffs of theological ayahuasca.

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These blessings are for us. They're not for warm feelings and vague encouragements.

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They're explicit blessings upon the church. We are to take them seriously.

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Those who read this book will be blessed. Those who hear and who obey this book will be blessed.

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The blessing is not given to the clever. It's given to the committed, not to those who solve the riddles or who figure out the prophecy, not to those who interpret the text into irrelevance, not to those who figure out every symbol, but those who embody the bride of Christ and live out her calling in the world with boldness, obedience, and joy.

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The blessing is for pulpits and for kitchens. It's for pastors and for parents. It's for churches and for children.

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It belongs to the sanctuary and at the Lord's supper table. It belongs in sermons and in songs, in discipleship groups and personal study.

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It doesn't require a seminary degree to understand it. It just requires a surrendered heart.

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When you read this book, when you read it out loud, you're not just performing a ritual.

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You're announcing that our Christ reigns. When you hear this book with reverence, you're aligning your heart to his.

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And when you keep the words of this book and you march in lockstep with its message and you build and you work and you do and you declare and you spread

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Jesus's gospel and you bring dominion to your family and to your neighborhood and to your job and to your church.

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And when you do all of the things that this book is saying, revelation doesn't become a mere survival manual for a future apocalypse.

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It actually becomes a charter for the church's dominion.

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The church no longer crouched in defeat. The church crowned in glory.

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Brothers and sisters, the beast has fallen. Babylon lies in ruins.

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The river of life is flowing out of the church. And now through the people of God, it flows to the nations of the world where we give out the fruit of the tree of life, which bears its fruit in season all 12 seasons, sorry, all 12 months.

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We give the world the gospel, we give the world the sacraments, we give the world the spirit wrought obedience of Jesus and his people.

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And that my friends is what the book of Revelation says is gonna heal the world. We'll get to this more in Revelation 22.

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But the church that's blessed, who becomes this new Jerusalem is the church that feeds the world with the gospel and heals the world.

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And then Christ returns when the world has been healed by his gospel, he returns to receive his faithful bride who's been obedient to his word and she is blessed.

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So when we read Revelation, we remember it's a book of blessing. When we read

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Revelation, we remember that we're supposed to obey it. We're supposed to be the bride, we're supposed to do the things that the bride is told to do.

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We're not left scratching our heads, wondering when the kingdom is gonna show up. We're the ones standing in it, we're the ones working in it and we're the ones bringing his blessings everywhere.

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Until next time, brothers and sisters, remember this book is blessed. And if there's one thing I could press, if there's one prayer that I would ask the

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Lord to answer for me is that this episode and other episodes that we do in this series would convince

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Jesus's church that this book is a blessed book, that this book is a book of blessing. And if we would obey it and do what it tells us to do as his church, we would not see

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Christendom shrinking any longer. We would see the church spreading, growing and bringing

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Jesus's dominion. Until next time, be about that work. And be blessed.