Revelation 1:4-8

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Is he still there? I think he's retired. Good morning. Good morning.
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Will, uh... Mike, will you award? Will you open us up with a word of prayer? Order in the court.
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Father God, thank you so much for this day that you've given us. Thank you for being able to come together and open your door,
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Mike, as He teaches us and help us to have clarity of mind. In Christ's name.
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Amen. Revelation chapter 1.
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I'll read the chapter and then we'll pick up where we left off last week.
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The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave Him to show His bondservants the things which must soon take place and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bondservant
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John who testified to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that He had sought.
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Blessed is He who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and they heed the things which are written in it for the time is near.
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John, to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from Him who was...
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I'm sorry, who is, who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before the throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness and firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
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To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood and He has made us to be a kingdom of priests and to His God and Father and to Him be the glory and dominion forever and ever.
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Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see
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Him even those who pierced Him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be.
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Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is, who was and who is to come, the
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Almighty. I, John, your brother, a fellow partaker in the tribulation, the kingdom and the perseverance which are in Jesus was on the island of Patmos because of the
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Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet saying, write in a book what you will see and send it to the seven churches.
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To Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.
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Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands and in the middle of the lampstand
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I saw one like the Son of Man and He was clothed in a robe reaching to His feet, girded across His chest with a golden sash.
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His head and His hair were white like wool, like snow, and His eyes were like a flame of fire.
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His feet were like burnished bronze when they had been made to glow in a furnace. His voice was like that of the sound of many waters and in His hand
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He held seven stars and out of His mouth came a sharp two -edged sword and His face was shining like the sun in its strength.
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And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. He placed His right hand on me and He said,
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Do not be afraid for I am the first and the last and the living One. I was dead and behold,
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I am alive forevermore. I have the keys of death and Hades. Therefore, write the things that you have seen, the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.
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As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand are the seven golden lampstands and the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
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Alright, last week we did the first three verses which is pretty normally called the prologue, but I do think that part of it continues on from verses 4 through 8.
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And when we get to, it almost sounds like a second opening when it says in verse 4, it says,
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John to the seven churches. Once again, who's this John? Who's this
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John? John the Apostle. Not John of Patmos, not John the
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Presbyter, not John of Gaius, this is John the Apostle.
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And he says to the seven churches saying right at the beginning who he's going to be sending it to and it says that he's going to do that to the seven churches in Asia.
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We often think of Asia as being more of China, Indonesia, Thailand.
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Asia in that time was far bigger. It engulfed and took over most of what we would call modern day the
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Middle East. So you would actually go from, Asia would have been from them as far as China all the way over to the end of where Byzantium would have been or just the other side of Constantinople or Istanbul today.
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That would be Asia Minor. And I wish I had a bigger map so I could show you exactly where it was at and I may get one made because it would show you exactly where all of these take place better than my poor drawing on the board last week.
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But it's in Asia Minor. Does anybody say Asia Minor? Translations to Asia Minor? No? All of you say
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Asia? In verse 4? In Asia Minor and it says,
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Grace to you in peace. We know that grace is a common greeting from Paul.
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Grace to you. That's what Paul would often say. Grace. That's more of a Greek way of introducing or greeting someone in peace which would have been
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Shalom in Hebrew. Now he's encompassing both of them. Not only the
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Greek but the Jewish response or greeting to the one. Grace and Shalom.
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From him who is, who was, and who is to come. Many people wonder who this person is when he says this.
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From him who is, who was, and who is to come. I think the context is going to tell us who this is.
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The him who is and who was and who is to come is none other than God himself.
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If you were to go back to Isaiah if you want to look at these later you can.
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I'll write them up here. Isaiah 41 It says that I am the first and the last.
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That's what he says in Isaiah 41 and then you go on down to Isaiah 44 and he says the same thing.
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The first and the last. Say the first and the last and say I'm the one who was, who is, and who is to come.
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He also, if you even go back to the time when Moses was talking to the burning bush and he said well when
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I go and I say they ask me who sent me what does he tell them to say who sent him?
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What does that say? I'm it. I'm the one. I'm the one who was, who is, and who is to come.
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Meaning I am the eternal one. If you say I am the first and you go all the way to the last that encompasses everything in the middle.
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Everything. You go God has no beginning and no end. You and I do and all of history has a beginning and end.
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Just to let you know, history has a beginning and end and everything from the beginning to the end points to one person and that's to the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what history is about. Now all that stuff in the middle can sometimes be convoluted or puzzling from our perspective but it's not to God.
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It's going to an appointed end. And that appointed end is a glorification of himself.
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He says and from the seven spirits who are before the throne.
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Now do we know anything about seven spirits? Anyone? Oh, we don't.
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What does seven represent? When we started at the beginning seven normally what's that?
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Yeah fullness, completion and we're going to see seven a lot all the way through.
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So when we see this as the seven spirits I go and I look back.
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Remember, we're heavy in the Old Testament. Okay? Very heavy in the Old Testament. The whole book of Revelation.
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So if you're not steeped in your Old Testament you can kind of just make whatever you want. But we can't do that because one,
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John is Jewish. He's going to continually point back to the Old Testament just like when he says hey from the one who is who was and who is to come.
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He's pointing back to Isaiah who had already revealed the character and nature of God and also in Isaiah it revealed the character and nature of what the
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Messiah which would be. Which would be who? The one that would be the first and the last.
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Here the seven spirits. Take your Bible and turn over to Isaiah chapter 11.
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We are going to see these seven spirits I think two other times.
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I think it's a total of three times in the book and I'm just going to be quite honest. The more we the few more times that we see it sometimes it's not nearly as clear.
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So we're having to draw a conclusion and this is speaking of the
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Spirit of God that would rest on the branch the shoot from Jesse and I'll read beginning in verse one that a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse.
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Who would that be? Who's going to be the descendant of Jesse? David. Who's going to be the descendant of David?
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That would be that's right. He will be the branch. And the branch in the middle of verse one and the branch from his root will bear fruit.
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And it says in verse two the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him. A spirit of wisdom.
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A spirit of understanding. A spirit of counsel. A spirit of strength. A spirit of knowledge and a spirit of the fear of the
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Lord and he will delight in the fear of the Lord and he will not judge by what he sees nor make decisions by what he hears but with righteousness he will judge the poor and decide the fairness for the afflicted of the earth.
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And he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
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So here we see in the Old Testament what I would say the text doesn't say this how
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I would understand the seven spirits around the throne would be the seven fold ministry of the
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Holy Spirit. The totality of the Spirit. And if you look back in Revelation we're seeing right in the beginning a
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Trinitarian position of the book. You have right there in the beginning
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God here and sandwiched in the middle is the seven spirits around the throne and then he goes on and from Jesus Christ.
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So you see we have this Trinitarian action going on. This is not a singular thing that's going on this is
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God the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ his witness right here in the beginning.
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That seven fold spirit that we were just talking about not only comes up again in the book but each time it comes up it's not always as clear because when we think about the
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Holy Spirit are we thinking about seven spirits? Do you think about seven spirits? Anybody?
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No, we think of one spirit because what does it say? There is one baptism, one spirit, one God. But there is the seven fold ministry of the
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Spirit meaning it's totality of how the Spirit works in the life of the believer and how it reveals
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Jesus Christ to people. When Jesus comes into the world did he testify of himself?
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Who did he point to? What's that? Then when Jesus says
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I'm leaving good morning and when Jesus says I'm leaving I'm going to send someone like me because I can't be with you.
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Look, Jesus and his corpus meaning his body and his resurrected glorified flesh and bone and you do know that Jesus Christ is flesh and bone still.
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Just because he died and rose again does not mean he's just some ethereal spirit now.
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No, no, no. He has flesh and bone. You can reach out and touch him. You remember what he told Thomas?
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When Jesus walked through a wall, that would have been freaky. He walked through the wall and what did he say?
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I think Thomas gets a bad rap. I think he gets a bad rap. I don't know about y 'all.
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You see someone crucified under the way the Romans did it.
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We're not talking about just a gunshot. We're talking about someone who by all means and from how the scripture reveals what
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Jesus looked like, he was unrecognizable from his beatings. Then he was crucified.
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They saw what had been done to him. Knew he was laid in a grave and his other buddies had seen
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Christ. He's going no way. No way. And I don't think there's anybody in this room at that time when if your friends would have told you the same thing, you'd go,
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I ain't gonna believe it. I gotta see it. And when Jesus walked through that wall, what did he say? Go ahead,
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Thomas. Go ahead. Put it in. Touch it. Stick it in.
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That's where the spear went. He didn't get a bad rap. He'd have been just like us.
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As a matter of fact, I long for that day when we see Christ in his fullness and I can touch those nail scarred hands.
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Where I can touch where that spear went in his side.
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Why? Because he bled and died for me. He bled and died for my sins. Not to make it so introspective, but those scars and that spear was for me.
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What did Paul say? He said, he was crucified with Christ. He died for me.
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He goes on here. He says, who are before his throne?
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Now, a few weeks ago I said, anybody remember how many times I said that throne was going to be used in pointing to God?
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Anybody remember? 34 times. 34 times it will be used in pointing to God, but it's used 47 times.
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Total, 34 of those is pointing to God being on his throne. These other times has to do with the beast,
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Satan, because he obviously has a throne as well. We'll get to that when we get to one of the churches.
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But it says here, before the throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness.
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What made Christ a faithful witness of God? Keeping the law, being crucified certainly.
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What else? From the beginning, and he continually testified of the
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Father. Then when that Spirit comes, like we were just saying a second ago, when that Spirit comes, who did the Spirit testify of? He said, remember,
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I can't be with you. I'm going to send somebody who can be with you because in his body, he can't dwell with all of us.
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He said, so I'm going away. It's to your advantage. If I go away, then I'm going to send someone like me who's not going to be with you.
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He's going to be what? In you. So now, Jesus being that faithful witness, continually testified of the
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Father, which ultimately got him what? Killed.
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That's right. Got him killed. Imagine standing before the religious leaders on that, hearing this.
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When he said, you know, you say you're a descendant of Abraham, but you're not. You think you are, because if you were a descendant of Abraham, you'd believe me, because Moses testified of me, but because you are not of your father
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Abraham, you are of your father the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning, and so were you.
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I don't think that went over well. Then, that last week of his life,
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I call it the day of questioning, on that Tuesday, which we would say, when he was on the
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Temple Mount teaching, he saw all those parables. Parable after parable. And he gets to the lawless vine dressers.
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In Matthew 21, he gives them the parable of, hey, there was a guy who had a vineyard, and he rented it out, and he gave it, and he expected his produce for the rent.
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And he came back, and those guys didn't want to pay him. And what'd they do? They killed the first guy that came. And then he said, alright,
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I'll send another person. And what'd they do? They killed him. And they said, alright, well, check it out.
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One more time, I'll send another man. And he sent another representative of himself, of the landlord. And he went, and what'd they do?
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They killed him. And what'd that landlord say? You know what? I'll do something better now. I'll send my son, and they won't kill him.
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Each one of those persons that came before, that was a representative of the prophets that they killed. And it says, when they saw that son coming from afar off, knowing that it was going to take the vineyard from them, it says that they killed him.
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And Jesus said, that's you, and that's what you're going to do to me. And it said that they knew that he was talking about them.
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So Jesus being a faithful witness of everything that the prophets had said before, everything that God had told him to do, he became a faithful witness.
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And that witness word, once again, as we spoke of briefly last week, is where we eventually get the word martyr.
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But remember, martyr at this point did not mean that. We think, what's a martyr from our perspective?
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Someone who dies for their faith. Yeah, dies for their faith. And I think we need to make a distinction as we go through beginning, because we're going to see some of those churches have martyrs.
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When we get to chapter 4, there's going to be the souls of those who have been killed around the throne, and we need to make a distinction at this point to be a martyr's not someone who dies for their belief.
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So if you think that's what it is, that's not what it is. Many people die for their beliefs.
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Men go into buildings with bombs strapped to themselves and blow themselves up for something that they believe.
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This here, specifically, a witness is somebody who has testified of what they have seen. Why do you think every one of those apostles were willing to die for the cause of Christ?
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Was it because of something they just believed, or was it because they saw Him? They saw
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Him. I don't care who you are. I believe there are faithful men who have strong faith, but there's going to be something different about if you were to see the risen
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Lord. Paul, seeing the risen Lord, then traveled a route for, what, nearly 30 years being beat, like Keith did it last week.
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I mean, all those things that happened to him because, one, he had seen the risen Lord. He had seen
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Who knocked him off the horse on the road to Damascus? The Spirit did. That's right.
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The Lord did. I believe He saw the risen Lord behind the
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Arabian desert for three years when He was being trained before He went out and began to preach the
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Gospel. It also says He was the firstborn of the dead. Was Jesus the firstborn of the dead?
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Was Jesus the first one to ever be resurrected? Alright, let's think of somebody who was resurrected in the
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Old Testament. Elijah, the widow of Zarephath, is that right?
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What about the person that was dead? Remember when they went to put the dead person into the tomb and it touched
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Elijah's bones? Anybody remember that freaky story? And the dude came alive because he touched the man of God.
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That would have been weird. Yeah. Who else before Christ died and resurrected?
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Yeah, the dry bones. That was a vision. The valley dry bones?
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That was a vision. What about the widow of Nain? Her son coming out.
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They were carrying the coffin. And Jesus said, you know, Jairus' daughter.
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The most famous. Lazarus. But all those ones that had resurrected.
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A mini resurrection per se. What happened? They all died again.
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They all died again. We made a joke on our question and answer a few weeks ago and somebody said, you know, the question came up about Lazarus and I said, you know, when it comes time to die again, he probably told his family don't worry about it.
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I've done this before. There's no big deal. You know, this has happened before and I'm going to be in a better place.
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As a matter of fact, I really didn't want to come back. So what it means is the firstborn of the dead, what is being conveyed here?
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He was the first one to be resurrected to never die again.
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And that is a promise to us that one day, you and I, when our body is going to be laid in the ground, those that believe, one day when the dead in Christ will rise first, if that Trump sounds, or we will be caught up in the air to meet him and we will have a glorified, resurrected body.
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It ain't going to be like this. I don't think we're all going to look the same, but it ain't going to be this.
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It's going to be better. Never to die again. Never to be corrupted.
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Never to have to deal with the flesh, sin, and the rest of this world because He will do away with all of it.
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That is what it means to be the firstborn from the dead. Colossians speaks of that. The Jehovah's Witness often say, hey, it's right here that He is a created being.
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And Jesus is not a created being. He is the creator of all things. Is there a time in history when
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Jesus, His incarnation began? Yes. But that's not when
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He began. That's when He clothed Himself in flesh and walked as a human being for 33 years.
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And then it says He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. That's encouraging to me.
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At any time you should read that, that should be encouraging. I would think that the readers, whether you think it's a late date, or whether you think it's an early date, whether you think
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Nero is on the throne, or whether you think that Domitian was on the throne, either way, you had a nutcase out there doing crazy things to people and there is something encouraging to know that they're not the ones who are actually ruling and reigning.
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It is Jesus Christ who is ruling and reigning. Now that's hard to go, you go, man, look at all these things that were going on.
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Nero lighting Christians on torches as he ran his chariots to go have orgies.
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You know, that is what he did. For his orgies he would pour and pitch over top of Christians, tie them to a post so he could do his orgies and homosexual activities with the burning of Christians.
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He would clothe them in animal skins and then chew their genitalia up.
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That's what he would do. That's the nutcase. And Domitian, he didn't care. If you just didn't like what he was doing, he'd kill you.
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That's who was the two nutcases, depending on your timing of the book. But it says that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth.
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Now, that word earth, we're going to see quite a few times through the book.
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It is the Greek word ge, gamma eta. And it can be translated land or earth, depending on the context.
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I prefer land, specifically because of what's related to it.
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He says here that he is the ruler of the kings of the earth. This is specifically dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem.
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And the land that we're talking about is, although Christ is ruling over the whole earth, but contextually, the land is what we're talking about.
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We're fixing to get into that when he talks about the tribes of the earth. It says that all the tribes of the earth will see him.
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Well, there's really not all the tribes of the earth in the Bible. There's only twelve tribes of the land.
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And what were those twelve tribes? Israel. Yes, Israel.
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Now, there is an application where you can say, well, there's tribes all over the earth, like we think about Scott, Phillips, and Jenny, and the tribes over there.
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That is not how the Bible understands the word tribe. We can make that application, but that is not how the
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Bible... There's no other tribe spoken of in the Bible beginning to end. Okay? Other than the twelve tribes of Israel.
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It says, and to him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood.
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Once again, we're coming to a point where early in the introduction,
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I talked about the Exodus undertones that are all the way through this book. We're going to be tabernacle undertones.
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The Lamb undertones. Remember, where did the Lamb actually become the covering for men to be released out of bondage?
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It would have been at the time of the Passover. So here it is. We're coming to a point where we're going to see another one of those
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Exodus undertones where it says to him who loves us and released us from our sins.
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Now, I know that some of your translations may say washed. I think the New King James and the
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King James say washed. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. That is the textual variant.
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The Texas Receptus and the Byzantine text. Some of the Byzantine texts have the as washed.
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The Alexandrian text says released. I think there is that both of them in application are correct.
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Did Jesus wash us with His blood? Yes. Yes. Yes.
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Did He release the children of Israel by the blood of the Lamb of the doorpost and the lamb?
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Yes. Okay. Here, I believe contextually released is the better translation.
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And just for Greek and textual variant people, it has to do with one
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Omicron being taken out. That is it. Doesn't change the meaning of the text.
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Christ washed us. Christ released us. Which one better fits the context of the book?
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I say released. If you disagree with me, that's fine. I would never say that Jesus hasn't washed us of our sins away.
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But He has released them from their bondage. He has released the children of Israel and the true
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Israel out of bondage by the blood of the Lamb. And then it says and He made us a kingdom of priest and to His God and Father.
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And I think the King James, new King James as well say kings and priests.
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Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Once again, that's a textual variant. The TR has it as kings and priests.
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But if you go back to Exodus 19, I'll put it up here if you want to go read it. I think it's 6.
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Somebody can check and see. I think it's Exodus chapter 19 verse 6. When Moses, they're leading them out and God says,
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I'm leading my people out and there He doesn't tell them I'm going to make them kings and priests.
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What does it say? I'm going to make them a kingdom of priests.
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So once again, we're looking back to the Exodus themes and overtones all through the book.
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So this is I believe a quotation in the Alexandrian text which would be most of our modern translation.
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It is a kingdom of priest to His God. God said, hey, I'm leading my people out.
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They're going to let them go. Once again, they were released. Go back up. Released by the blood.
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I'm going to bring them out. I'm going to make them a kingdom of priest to His God. Remember, when they left
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Egypt, Israel is going out as a nation into the Sinai Peninsula and they get there and He says, hey,
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I'm going to make them a kingdom of priests there. He begins to, He gives them the book of the covenant which is what we would call the
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Ten Commandments. Remember? He sprinkles them and they said before they ever even got the law they said, remember what they said?
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We said this a couple weeks ago. What's that? Whatever. You go up there. You take care of it because it's scary over there.
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It peels of thunder and it's shaking. You go up there and just whatever He says, we'll deal with it. Alright.
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He gives them the Ten Commandments, the Ten Words, which are foundational for everything else. The 613 or however you want to say it.
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Come after that. And He sprinkles them with the blood making the covenant legitimate from their perspective and what does
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He do? He goes up on the mountain for how many days? Forty days.
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Forty days. And in that forty days they get a little wearisome down there.
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And Keith said this a few weeks ago when he was preaching about when
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Aaron says, hey everybody give me your earrings and stuff and we're worried about Moses.
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I think he's gone. He's losing his mind anyway. We don't think he's coming back. And Aaron said, why don't you just give me all your gold and we'll put it in this fire and from what he told
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Moses happens, not what happened. He told Moses, hey man we threw this stuff in the fire and poof man this golden calf leaped out.
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That's not what happened. Their craftsman fashioned it into an image of Yahweh.
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Notice they didn't call it it wasn't Baal. They made a picture of Baal and says here it is.
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Look at it. This is what brought us out of the land of Egypt.
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And I think the King James says they start making sport. I'm going to be honest with you.
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They weren't playing table tennis. They weren't playing badminton. It wasn't volleyball and there wasn't basketball going on.
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Okay. There was sexual immorality all kinds of craziness going on.
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Joshua who had went up that mountain halfway waded.
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Moses was up there. He hears that. He says hey man it sounds like war going on down there.
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And God said you better go down there. They're doing something crazy. God's on his way down.
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He sees them in the debauchery of what they were doing acting like pagans. And what did
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Moses do? He threw the tablets down which symbolically from my mind this is not
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I don't think this is what Moses but in my mind I go he has just showed them y 'all have broken the covenant.
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The very thing you told me to go get in Moses anger though he throws it on the ground it's broken.
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And he does something in that right immediately after that that some people say
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Moses had a fit of rage. I don't. I believe this is what God told him to do.
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He said those who are on my side over here on the Lord. He did something very disturbing to people.
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He went out and he sent in the Levites. You know what they did? Anybody remember? They went out.
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They went to each household and to each tent. Killing those who would not follow the
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Lord. Some 3 ,000 people died that day. Through that. Then he went back up where he was going to make them a kingdom of priests.
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No longer is it going to be a kingdom of priests. Now who was the priesthood? What's that?
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It would only be of Aaron and then the Levites would be part of that but they wouldn't be actual priests.
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They would do priestly duties. But that kingdom of priests is no longer the whole nation.
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Now it's narrowed down to a specific line and a group. Well here he has made us.
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Who's the us? The church. You and I, we're the priesthood of all believers. That is one thing through the reformation pointed to that you and I no longer have to have a priest.
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And the reformation before that, they believed they had to have a priest. Martin Luther came along and said nonsense.
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The priesthood of all believers, we can go directly to God. Why? Because we have been released from bondage.
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We have had our sins washed away and we can come to Him because we are a kingdom of priests.
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And it says to His God and Father and to Him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Why would it be to Him be the glory and dominion forever and ever?
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Why? Because everything's about Him and for Him and through Him and by Him. It's not about you and me.
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And we often think about the cross and it is the cross in many ways was an exposition of God's love for His people.
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But don't forget that it is also a major exposition of the depths of the sinfulness of who you are.
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To the extremities by which God went through to bring no good rotten sinners to Himself.
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That's love. Think about the people that you love. Why do you love them?
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What's that? That's right. I love Sybil because she's pretty. She's hot.
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She takes good care of me. She's kind to me. She's forgiving.
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She's lovable. There's nobody in this room from God's perspective should be lovable.
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God did the unthinkable. He took the unlovable and loved them despite of who they were.
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We love people because of who they are. God's not that way.
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Now, He did wash us, release us through the blood of His Son, and then now loves us, not because of who we are, but because of who
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His Son is. And another, as Andy said, think about this.
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God loves you no more, no less than He loves His own Son. That's amazing.
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And be careful how to say this. The rights and privileges that God gave to His Son are given to you.
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Because we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. We are seated with Him, and everything that God gave
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His Son, His Son is giving to us, and we'll get...oh, well, we ain't got time to get into it.
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Yes, and not only that, we see that in this next statement where it says, because it's in chapter 1, verse 7,
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Behold, He is coming with the clouds. That is an echo back to Daniel chapter 7, verse 13.
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If you remember those that were in the Daniel study, a lot of people think, oh, that's the second coming. Well, it can't be.
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All you've got to do is just look at the plain direction in which Jesus was going, the Son of Man in that passage.
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He wasn't coming from the throne of the Ancient of Days coming to the earth. Where was He going?
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He was going from the earth to the Ancient of Days. And when He gets to that Ancient of Days, what does the Ancient of Days give to Him?
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It says He gives Him a kingdom of people of every nation, every tribe and tongue. And then what does the
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Son of Man do? He then takes that kingdom and He gives it to His people. Well, what did
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Jesus do for you and I? On the mountain when at the end of chapter 28 of Matthew, which
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I believe is in the mountain of Galilee where He gives the Great Commission, He says, now you go into all the nations.
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How could we go into all the nations and make disciples? How? Because all authority has been given to who?
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To Christ. Now He, what did He do? I'm giving it to you. Now you have that authority to now go and make disciples.
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The very thing that He did for three and a half years to not only the twelve, but the seventy that He sent out, now
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He was giving us the ability to go do that as well. It says here that He is coming with the clouds.
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Now, we won't finish seven, so I need to figure out where to kind of break this off.
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There are two perspectives, major perspectives. When it says here, behold
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He is coming with the clouds, many believe that's the second coming even here. Most futurist, even pre -millennial, historical pre -millennial and dispensational pre -millennial believe that this is talking about Jesus coming at His second coming.
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Okay? I understand how they come to that conclusion. I disagree with it. There's also the perspective that this is from a full preterist position that this is
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Jesus coming and laying waste at 70 A .D. coming in judgment to judge the nation of Israel and Jerusalem.
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I understand how the full preterists come to that position, but I don't agree with the full preterist position.
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Because what they have done, what John has done, is he has taken two
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He has taken two Old Testament Zechariah If you notice, those are two
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Does any of your translations have caps around that? Or is it That's two passages in the
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Old Testament. Behold He is coming with the clouds is a quotation from Daniel chapter 7 verse 13 and then where it says, and every eye will see
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Him, even those who pierce Him and all the tribes of the land or the earth will mourn over Him. That section is a quotation from Zechariah 12.
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So, He has taken these two ideas and mashed them together. And if that bothers you, get used to it because John does it a lot through the whole book.
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He at times takes an Old Testament passage of how it was understood in its original context and then, the only way
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I know how to say it is He repurposes that. He repurposes that verse to another application.
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So when it says here, Behold He is coming with the clouds, there, I see that two ways.
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Certainly, it could be pointing to the judgment in which would happen at 70 AD, but it is not in the full preterist perspective.
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When Jesus is on trial and they ask Him, Are you plainly the
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Christ? I think it's in Matthew 26. 26 or 27.
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Are you plainly the Christ? Caiaphas asked Him. And He said, You've said it yourself.
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I mean, how many times did Jesus say, Look, I have told you time and time again and you've not believed me. And when
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He said, You've said it yourself, I've already told you. You remember what happened? The high priest servant, what did he do?
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He backhanded Christ or cross slapped Him. He hit Him in the face. And Jesus says,
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The next time you see me, I'll be coming in clouds of glory.
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Becoming in clouds of glory. Now, there are two perspectives on how to see that.
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It says that you will see the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. What was the sign of the
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Son of Man being in heaven? One, it would be the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the old, the inauguration of the new.
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But remember, once Jesus was glorified, exalted, ascended, what was the promise
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He was going to send? The Holy Spirit. He told Him, You've got ten days.
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Go chill out in Jerusalem and in ten days I'm going to send the Spirit. In ten days He sent the
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Spirit. And if you remember what Peter's message, when he came out of the upper room, he went out and began to preach in the streets.
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You remember what he preached? This is that, which is spoken of in the prophet Joel. And it talked about the sun being darkened, the overthrowing of governmental powers and stars and all of these things.
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Well, what caused that to happen? The giving of the Holy Spirit. We often think of, hey, the giving of the
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Holy Spirit really did not do any upheaval to the political or religious things in Jerusalem.
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Man, it turned it upside down. Go listen to Bert and Andy's thing on Acts. The giving of the
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Spirit turned Jerusalem upside down. And ultimately through Paul and the
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Apostles, it turned the Roman Empire upside down. And we've got to quit.
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And all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him, so it is to be. Amen. We will pick up, finish verse 7 next week and go into the
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Alpha and the Omega that says the Lord God. And I plan to try to get here today.
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I'm going to show you in a little passage here, if the Jehovah's Witness knock on your door and say,
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Jesus never claimed to be God, I can show you. I brought a New World translation from their
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Bible. I can show you in their Bible where Jesus is God in their Bible. You can take their
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Bible out of their hands and show them. I think, Mike, you went with me when I preached outside the
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Jehovah's Witness. Keith thought I was nuts. I said, I said, hey, because most people when you're there, they don't want to listen to you because you're not using their translation.
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So I said, hey, I'm going to preach from your translation. I have a New World translation right here. And I preached a passage from their
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Bible that says, you claim Jesus is not God. Your own Bible says Jesus is
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Jehovah. So we'll talk about that next week so you can clip them at their knees as soon as they knock on your door sometime.
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Bert, will you pray for us? Father, once again, we're grateful for another day that we can assemble here.
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It's the Lord's Day and we're so happy. We're rejoicing that we can be here teaching today as He's always prepared well.