The Book Of Revelation (part 1)

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The Book Of Revelation (part 2)

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We're going to start this morning into a four -part look at a book that either excites people or scares people or something.
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We're going to look at Revelation for the next four Sundays. And Revelation is one of those books that is either totally ignored or people obsess about it.
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And both of those things are incorrect. Some people take the approach that, well,
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Revelation is so arcane, it's so mysterious, it's got so many...I
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mean, it's got trumpets and bowls and you name it all through there that we can't possibly figure out what that means and so we're just going to ignore it completely.
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Or they focus on Revelation to the exclusion of the rest of the Bible because, you know, they become eschatology junkies and that's all they want to look about.
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And both of those two approaches are wrong because Revelation is part of the all scripture that is given by inspiration of God and that is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.
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And we are to take the entire scripture, the whole counsel of God and look at it.
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And so we want to look at Revelation. And like I say, we're going to do this for the next four weeks, which is just enough time to barely scratch the surface.
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I mean, you can preach for years out of Revelation and never get out of the book with all of the things that are there and the things that you can deal with.
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And so if I can just introduce you to the book and whet your interest and get you, you know, intrigued with what this book has to teach us.
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And so let's go to the throne of grace before we open the Word of God. So, our
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Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning that you have given us the entire scripture.
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You have given us the book of Revelation and you have given it to us for our profit. May the Holy Spirit minister to us this morning as we begin to look at what the
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Apostle John has written under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And we ask this in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Now, the introduction to the book of Revelation and reading from the
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King James. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show him being
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John, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass, and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant
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John, who bore witness of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw.
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Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is at hand.
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John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loveth us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and hath made us a kingdom of priests unto
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God and his father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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Behold he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him and they also who pierced him and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him, even so, amen.
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I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the
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Almighty. Now, notice what the book says about itself.
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As we start down this introduction, and this is all we're going to get through this Sunday, this introduction, the first thing it says, the revelation, excuse me, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
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God gave unto him. And then he goes on, who bore witness, verse 2, who bore witness of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw.
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The book claims divine inspiration for itself. Now, of its 404 verses, 278 of them allude to the
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Old Testament. 278 of these verses allude to the Old Testament.
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And the purpose of the book is to reveal God the Father in glory and describes him this way.
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It describes him in chapter 4, verse 8 as holy. It describes him in chapter 6, verse 10 as true.
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It describes him in chapter 4, verse 11 as omnipotent, also as sovereign in the same verse.
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He is described as wise in chapter 7, verse 12. And he is described as eternal in verse 10, again, of chapter 4.
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And so the central theme of revelation is that God, and specifically
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Jesus Christ, is to be worshiped and praised. And the purpose of this book is to show us
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Jesus Christ glorified. Now, it's going to talk a lot. You say, well,
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I thought it talked about the end times. Well, it does. It talks about many things. But the theme of the whole thing, the theme of the whole thing is that Jesus Christ and God the
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Father are to be worshiped. And we see this over and over and over again.
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This book is rightly called a revelation. And one of the objections that you hear so much is that, well, nobody can understand what's in revelation.
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But when you think about it, that's an oxymoron. Because revelation is not to hide.
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Revelation is to reveal. It is to show us things. And so the subject matter of this is the end times.
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It is the ultimate destiny of everything. It details
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Christ's ultimate triumph over Satan. It details the rapture of the church, that is,
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God's heavenly people and what's going to happen to them. It details the restoration of Israel, God's earthly people and what's going to happen to them.
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It details the climactic battle and the defeat of Satan. It details the final disposition of unbelievers.
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It details the final disposition of Satan and the fallen angels. And it details the final disposition of the earth and the physical universe.
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And here's a hint. There is going to be global warming, but it's not going to be the kind that everybody's looking for.
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You know. All right. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, that is, his ultimate purpose.
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And so Jesus Christ is described this way in Revelation. He is described first as the faithful witness, chapter 1, verse 5.
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Also as the firstborn of the dead, and we'll address these later. He is addressed as the ruler of the kings of the earth, all in verse 5 of chapter 1.
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He is listed as the Alpha and the Omega, described as the Alpha and the Omega in chapter 1, verse 8, and in chapter 21, verse 6.
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Again, as the first and the last, chapter 1, verse 17. As the living one, chapter 1, verse 18.
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As the one who holds the seven stars, in chapter 2, verse 1.
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The one who walks among the seven lampstands, in chapter 2, verse 1.
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He is described as having a sharp two -edged sword. Again, chapter 2, verse 1 and 2.
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He is described as the son of God, in verse 18 of chapter 2.
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He has eyes like fire, chapter 2, verse 18.
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The first time Jesus Christ was here on earth, he had eyes, he had gentle eyes, eyes that made little children come up to him.
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He had eyes that made little children come up and sit on his lap, and their mothers let them do that. Not the second time.
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The second time, his eyes are blazing. He's got feet like bronze, that's also verse 18 of chapter 2.
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He has described as having the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, chapter 3, verse 1.
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He is the holder of the key of David. He opens and no one shuts, and he shuts and no one opens.
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That's a phrasing that refers to omnipotence and sovereignty.
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He is the amen, faithful and true witness. He is the beginning of the creation of God.
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He is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is the root of David.
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He is the lamb of God. He is the Lord holy and true. He is faithful and true.
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He is the word of God. He is king of kings and lord of lords, and he is the bright and morning star.
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Revelation from beginning to end affirms the full deity of Christ. All of the attributes, all of the prerogatives that are ascribed to the father are also ascribed to the son.
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This is a good book to go to when you're dealing with someone that says, Jesus Christ is not
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God. He is God. Everything about God is ascribed to him in this. He has sovereignty.
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That's verse 5 of chapter 1. He has eternity. He is eternal. Chapter 1, verses 17 and 18.
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He has the right to judge, chapter 19, verse 11. He has the right to decide life and death.
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It's chapter 1, verse 18, and chapter 2, verse 23. He receives worship, chapter 5, verse 13.
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And he rules from God's throne, chapter 22, verses 1 and 3.
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Now, as you might imagine, there are several different views of Revelation.
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How are we to take Revelation? And one of them, for example, that you would come across if you looked out into the liberal church is that Revelation is simply an allegory.
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It's the eternal struggle between evil and good, and it's just laid out in this apocalyptic story that we have here.
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But among evangelical groups, there are essentially two views that look at this and look at the book of Revelation.
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First is, or one of them is what we call the Preterist view. And this is, frankly, is a minority view.
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It is the view that says that what is recorded in Revelation is a historical record of events of the first century.
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That it's the events of the Roman Empire's invasion of Palestine, the sacking of Jerusalem, which occurred in 70
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AD. And it's simply written in apocalyptic language.
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And a number of good men have that, hold that view. But first of all, that view ignores
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Revelation's own claims to be prophecy, verse 3 of chapter 1, verse 7 of chapter 22, verse 10, and verses 18 and 19 of chapter 22.
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Plus the fact not all the events that are predicted and written about in Revelation have yet occurred.
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And secondly, and thirdly, perhaps, it gets things out of order because the
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Jerusalem was sacked in 70 AD, and John wrote this somewhere in the 90s.
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You know, 92, 3, 4, along in there from the Isle of Patmos. So, the timeline gets screwed up.
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The other view is the Futurist view. And this is the view that I hold. It is the view that this church holds.
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This view sees chapter 4 through 22 as predictions of coming events, or as Revelation says of itself, the things which shall be hereafter.
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That Revelation deals with past, present, and future. The things which you have seen,
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John, the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter. There are three distinct categories that are addressed in Revelation.
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And if you're going to use the literal grammatical historical hermeneutic which we use here in this church, this is the only view that you can come up with.
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It's the only view that is supported. The view that uses Scripture in the sense that Scripture is normally used, allowing for hyperbole, allowing for illustrations, allowing for figures of speech, but nonetheless, you say what you say, and it means what it means.
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It doesn't mean something else. The idea of the allegorical interpretation of Revelation really started to come up in the later centuries of the
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Christian church when it was one of those things where, well, it can't mean that, so what does it mean?
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So anyway, you need to know where your speaker is coming from. So that's what that is.
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So the outline of the book comes like this, and this is right from John MacArthur's commentary on Revelation.
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Section 1 is the things which you have seen. This is chapter 1, verses 1 to 20, and it covers a prologue.
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It covers a vision of the glorified Christ, and it covers John's commission to write, where John is commissioned to sit down and write this work.
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And John is going to do his very best to describe the indescribable. John is going to be taken into heaven, and he's going to be shown things which are so staggering that it takes an enormous amount of effort just to describe in terms that people can understand what it is that he's seen, and he does his best at this.
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And then there are the things which are, and this is chapter 2, verse 1 to chapter 3, verse 22, and these are the letters to the churches, and we will deal with those next week, what the writer and what the
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Holy Spirit has to say to the various, to the seven churches, seven real actual churches that existed at the time that John wrote this.
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And yet, as we shall see, each one of these churches, there's a threefold application to each one of these messages to the churches.
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First of all, there's a real church. There's a real church at Ephesus. There's a real church at Shmyrna.
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There's a real church at Philadelphia, and he's writing to that church. But there is also a...there
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is a type of Christian that fits each one of these churches. There are
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Ephesian Christians. There are Philadelphian Christians. There are Laodicean Christians, or people that claim to be
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Christians. And then there's also a church age, as we'll see, that fits each one of these church descriptions as well.
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And so, we will look at those as we go. And then, starting in Chapter 4, he goes into the things which shall be hereafter.
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And we see worship before the throne. We see a lot about the Great Tribulation.
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We see details about the second advent of Jesus Christ. We see details about the millennium.
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We see details about the Great White Throne Judgment, and also details about the eternal state of the universe, and what is going to happen in the future.
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That's an overview of the book of Revelation. Let's pray. Now, let's start in on an introduction here.
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So, as we said, the essential nature of Revelation is to reveal. That's what a revelation does.
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And as we have emphasized so often here in Sunday School, and from the pulpit, and all the rest of it,
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God has revealed himself to us. We would not know of him had he not done that.
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Because by our natures, we do not seek God. Mankind does not seek after God.
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In fact, we run as far from him as we can get. Yes? Yeah, you're right.
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For the recording, the comments made that in Greek, the name of the book is
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Apocalypse. And the term Apocalypse has now come to mean a great huge destruction of whatever it is.
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And that is because of the things that are detailed in this book, because there is a lot of destruction that is detailed in the book.
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Right down to the destruction of the earth is detailed in this book.
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And so, the term indeed does mean, has come to mean just a great huge amount of destruction.
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But the fundamental thing of the book of Revelation is to reveal, to open up.
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And so, it is to reveal, not conceal. And so, it's going to tell us how it all ends.
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And this whole thing is an amplification of Old Testament prophecies. Remember I said that 278 of 404 verses allude back to the
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Old Testament. This is an expansion. One of the things that the Old Testament prophets dealt with, one of the problems that they dealt with is that they didn't understand what they had written.
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They wrote it down, but they didn't know what it meant. And they studied trying to figure out, you know, what is this thing that I have written down under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit actually mean? Well, if they'd stayed around for Revelation, they'd have been a little better off.
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But anyway, what is revealed here? Well, first of all, it reveals the danger of sin.
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It reveals the danger of sin, both to us as individuals and to the church. As you go through, when we go through the letters to the seven churches, each one of them, well, for most of them, there is something to commend and there is something to correct.
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And so, there's a commendation and a commendation for both of them, condemnation and commendation for both of them.
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And there's one exception where there's no commendation, and there's also a one exception where there's no condemnation.
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But basically, there's one of each one. It shows the danger of sin. It shows the strength of Jesus Christ, His strengths.
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It reveals the glory and majesty of God. And it gives us a glimpse into the throne room of heaven and shows us the worship that is going on there.
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And when you look at this, you immediately think back to the opening chapters of Isaiah, where Isaiah also got a glimpse into the throne room of heaven.
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And you remember his reaction when he saw that. You can just imagine what John's going through. John's an old man when he starts writing
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Revelation. He's in exile. He has seen most of the men, if not all of the men that he has labored and ministered with throughout his lifetime.
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They're all dead now. And they're not all dead. Most of them are dead from other than natural causes.
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And so, he's pretty much alone, and he's exiled on this island, and then he's given this vision that he has to then write down and describe the indescribable.
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It also shows the end of human history. Where is it all going to end? Where is it all going? And that's one of the things that should give us a sense of comfort, is that we know how it all comes out.
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It's like, you know, we're reading the novel except that we have gone to the last... You ever go to the last page of the book and read, you know, to see how it all comes out at the end?
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Let's see, we know how it all comes out at the end. So, as we see situations developing in the world that seem to have no solutions, what do we think about the sweep of Islam across the world, seemingly unstoppable?
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What do we think about that? Well, if we're thinking correctly, we go to the scripture and read how it all comes out.
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What's God going to do about that? I have no idea, but He is going to do something. He is going to do something because I know what's not going to happen ultimately, and I know what is going to happen ultimately.
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It gives the final political setup of the world. Where is the world going? Well, you can find out by reading
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Revelation. It details the world government. We are going to a world government at some point.
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We should hold it off as long as we can, but the world is going to get there. It details the career of the
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Antichrist. It also details the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ and the glory of Christ's earthly reign and the ultimate defeat of Satan and the ultimate defeat of sin.
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And overall, it details the majesty and glory of Jesus Christ as He comes, as He rules, as He interacts with the
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Father in heaven, all of these things. That's the central theme.
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Every description of Jesus Christ in Revelation is one of glory and majesty.
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We don't have the suffering servant in Revelation. We don't have the humiliated
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Jesus in Revelation. Here we have glory and majesty and conquering and all of those things.
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He is no longer is He veiled in flesh in Revelation. He's out there in full glory,
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King of kings and Lord of lords, and riding forth and conquering and leading
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His army. Except that's going to be a great army to be a part of because if you read the description of the heavenly armies that come out following Jesus Christ, you will notice something.
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There's only one person in that entire entourage that's got a weapon, and that's
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Him. The rest of us are just along to be the cheering section, you know.
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That's my kind of guy. I'll follow that sort of a general, you know. And anyway, we will get there at some point and at least touch on it.
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He is now King of kings and Lord of lords. And so, what's the source? The source of Revelation is
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God Himself. This is also still all in verse 1, all in verse 1, verse 1, part
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C. And what is this doing? The Father has promised to exalt the
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Son, Philippians 2, 9 to 11. But the
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Father promises that the Son will be exalted, and Revelation details that exaltation.
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What is going to happen as Jesus Christ is exalted above all the kings of the earth?
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And verse 1 also details the human recipients, His bondservants. Who's supposed to read this?
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Jesus Christ's bondservants. And what's a bondservant? If you go to Exodus chapter 21 and look in verses 5 and 6, it details what he's talking about.
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And you could only have a slave in the Old Testament economy for a certain period of time.
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Every seven years, I believe, you had to let them all go because the jubilee year would come, and that was one of the things that happened.
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However, you might come across a situation where this particular servant or slave so loved his master and so loved his master's family and so wanted to serve his master that he said,
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I'm not going to go. You know, I have come to love my master. I want to continue to serve him in perpetuity.
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And so when you came across that situation, the master would take that servant and lean him up against the doorpost and would basically take an awl and pierce his ear into the post of the door.
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And that meant he was a bondservant, that he was a lifetime servant of this master by his own choice.
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He had chosen to do this. And so he was going to serve this man.
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This was all a testimony. I'm going to serve this man for the rest of my days. And that was a bondservant.
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And that's how John describes himself, and that's how John describes us. We are the slaves.
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We are the servants of Jesus Christ. And in one sense, we are that way because of our own choice.
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And I don't want to, you know, we know all about election, predestination, and all that kind of stuff. But there was a point after God's working in our lives when we placed our faith in Jesus Christ and said,
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I'm going to stop my own efforts. I'm going to place my faith in Jesus Christ and in his finished work.
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And from that point on, we are his bondservants. And this is addressed to us. And this is why we have the potential to understand what revelation is all about.
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Why do other people not understand revelation? Why is it incomprehensible to them? It's not addressed to them.
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Jesus said the same thing. He says, you don't hear my voice because you're not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice.
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You don't hear my voice because you're not my sheep. In fact, he goes on. You are of your father, the devil.
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You know, how to win friends and influence people. There he goes. And so it's intended for us.
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It's intended for us. And then the character of the book.
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The character of the book is largely prophetic. This is part E of verse 1.
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The emphasis is going to be on future events. Everything from chapter 4 on, basically, is a future event.
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And so, yes, he's going to talk to the churches for chapters 2 and 3. But from that point on, everything's future.
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And so, it's interesting how the
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New Testament breaks down. Because the first five books of the New Testament are past events.
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They're the Gospels and Acts. You know, what do the apostles do? The second 21 of the
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New Testament books are for the present. They are instructions to us today. Those include the pastoral epistles and all of that.
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That's directed to the church today and to Christians today. One book is future, and that's
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Revelation. And so, where is the emphasis? The emphasis is on Christ's soon return.
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He uses these words several times. He says in verse 1, he says, to show his servants things which must shortly come to pass.
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And for the time is at hand, verse 3. There's emphasis placed on the imminency of what he's talking about.
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And you may be thinking, well, it's been 2 ,000 years. But in God's economy, 2 ,000 years is not a very long time.
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And we are to live our lives as if he is going to return before church is done today.
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How are we supposed to live? How should we then live? It says in 2
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Peter, we are to live holy lives because he might return today. We're told several times in the scripture that no one knows the exact hour that Jesus Christ will return.
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Well, why is that? Why didn't God tell us that on such and such a date, at such and such a time, Jesus is coming back?
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Because if we knew the date, human beings that we are, sinners that we are, we would slough off until a frantic amount of activity on the last week before Jesus is coming back.
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You know, as we try to get everything in order, right? I mean, you all remember that. When you were kids and your father went away, you know, and what happens?
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Mom says, Dad will be home tomorrow. And all of a sudden, there's this flurry of activity, right? Well, we don't know when
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Jesus is coming back. But it could be before this service is done.
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It could be before this day is done. And we are to live our lives with that in mind.
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And that's what's emphasis over and over and over here. How should we then live?
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We are to be ready. We are to be ready, the imminence of his return.
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And the emphasis here is the certainty of his return, not the time of his return.
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In fact, we are specifically told in Scripture that we are not supposed to speculate on the time of his return, which always amazes me is when people turn right around and do exactly that.
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You know, why are you doing what you're specifically told not to do in Scripture? But anyway, besides that.
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Verse 1 also details the supernatural delivery of the book. And also chapter 22, verse 16.
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This is the only New Testament book that is sent and communicated by angels.
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Notice what it says. Notice what it says. He sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant
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John. So apparently there was some angelic messenger that delivered this book.
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And this is the only time this comes up. There are more references to angels in Revelation than in any other book.
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There are 71 references to angels in this book. Angels appear in every single chapter of Revelation except chapter 4 and chapter 13.
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We're beginning to see the angelic host actively involved in what's going on in the universe.
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Now, the angelic host have always been actively involved in what goes on in the universe, but we don't see a lot of that in Scripture until we get to Revelation.
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All of a sudden we do. Why? Because things are wrapping up. Things are wrapping up.
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And we're speeding towards the end. And one of the things that young people, if you talk to someone who's older than you are, one of the things they will all tell you is that as you get older, life accelerates.
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Life is going much faster now than it was when I was five. I can tell you that.
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And every person in here will tell you. If you talk to somebody, I don't care how old you are, talk to somebody that's older than you are, and they'll tell you that that continues.
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It keeps going. Life is speeding up. Well, the whole thing of the universe is speeding up too.
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And when we get towards the end, it's going to be going at breakneck speed. And we see that in Revelation.
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When we finally get into the discussion of the judgments and the bowl judgments and the trumpet judgments, it's like one right after the other, just boom, boom, boom, boom.
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It's coming like that at this tremendous pace as we rush to the end. And so we'll see that as we look at the book.
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And then the human author is identified, again, in verse 1 and also in verse 2.
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Now, John wrote this from exile on the Isle of Patmos, as we've said. It's interesting.
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This is the only one of John's writings where he makes a direct reference to himself.
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John does not normally refer to himself by name. In his gospel, he is the disciple that Jesus loved or something similar to that.
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In his letters, he identified himself as the elder under the elect lady,
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I believe, is the way he opens that in 1 John. But here, he is so staggered by what he has seen and what he has witnessed and what he has been told to write down that he actually puts his name in the book twice.
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He bookends this thing. He's got it right up front, and he's got it at the end, that I, John, wrote this.
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And he identified himself as a bondservant, one of those to whom Revelation is addressed.
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Now, it's interesting because, you know, in spite of the fact that John put his name in the book twice, nonetheless, it's popular among certain circles to say that John didn't write this and somebody else wrote it.
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Why you would say that, I have no idea, except that we always, the Scripture is always attacked. But the entire, all of the early church fathers up until really the third century, it wasn't even a question that the apostle
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John had written this. And so it was only when the name has now escaped me, but it was around the third century that someone finally started to challenge whether or not
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John had written this. But John wrote this. The apostle John wrote this. And so what does verse 3 go on about?
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Well, there are blessings promised. There are blessings promised right off the bat in this book.
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First of all, to those who read and obey. Now, that's a caveat, not just read, but read and obey what's written down here.
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Other blessings that are promised in Revelation, blessings are promised to those who die in Christ.
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That's chapter 14, verse 13. Blessings are promised to those who stay awake and keep their garments in the old
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King James language. That means stay awake and stay ready, you know, stay dressed, in other words.
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When in a combat zone, when combat soldiers rest and sleep, they don't get undressed.
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They keep their battle dress either on or at least immediately at hand.
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That was one of the things we were taught is to keep your stuff where you can reach it in the dark quickly.
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So you don't scatter everything all over your area, you know, because I can tell you when the rounds start coming in, you don't want to be hunting for your pants over here.
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You want to be able to grab your rifle, grab your flak jacket, grab your helmet and be out the door. And you learn to do that.
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Well, that's what John is saying. He says, you know, be ready for action because you don't know when
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Jesus is coming back. And when he comes back, you know, there's not going to be time to get your affairs in order.
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And so they also promise blessings to those who are invited to the marriage supper of the
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Lamb. That's chapter 19, verse 9. Also to those who participate in the first resurrection, that's chapter 20, verse 6.
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And to those who have washed their robes and can enter by the city gates.
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Yes. Okay. Well, yeah.
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First of all, this book, even though it is written for Christians and it is written for our prophet, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for all these things.
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This is not an easy book. It's not something, it takes work to master this.
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And particularly in the case of a person like, let's say, Martin Luther, with his background and where he was coming out of,
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I can see why this book gave him a hard time. The book of James gave him a hard time too. And so, you know, you have a little sympathy for those folks that were back at the dawn of the
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Reformation when they start to look at this. And one of the reactions, because this book doesn't really fit the view that certain individuals and certain organizations had of the world, and so their reaction was to allegorize it and make this into a big allegory.
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It's just a story, you know. It's not a literal recording of what's going to happen in the future.
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And so, and again, as you say, the prevalent religion of this area, they take the allegorical view that this is essentially an allegory.
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And as I said when we first opened, one of the dangers of Revelation is to get fixated on it and to study it to the exclusion of other books.
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You know, there's two things you want to avoid with Revelation. You don't want to ignore it, nor do you want to get fixated upon it.
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It's one more book of the 66 books, and God gave us all 66, and he gave us all 66 that we're to learn all 66 and to study them, because all of them are profitable.
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And so, again, we don't want to ignore Revelation, neither do we want to, you know, to ride the eschatological horse.
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It's one of the old jokes, you know. If you really want to get your Sunday night service attendance up, just start doing a series on Revelation, you know, because folks love, you know, to hear about this stuff.
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Yes. I would certainly, that's certainly part of it, because, yeah, every one of these churches, well, at least six of them, were given admonishments that they were to, or all seven of them, no, six of them, excuse me, were given admonishments of things that they were to correct.
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And some of these things were like the church at Ephesus. Lots of good stuff going on at Ephesus. I mean, they had it down.
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They were doctrinally sound, you know, they were rolling. But Paul says, or John says, you've lost your first love.
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You need to recover your first love. And it goes on, you know.
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He has a lot of good things to say for most of the churches, but he's also got admonishments, and that's certainly a blessing.
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Whenever someone corrects us and calls to our attention something in our lives that needs correction and we correct it, isn't that a blessing?
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But I think there are other blessings as well. I think some of the blessings are simply the confidence that comes from knowing that no matter how bad it looks, we know how it's going to come out.
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Somehow the author of the book is going to straighten everything out by the time we get to the end, and everything will be set right.
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And even if it's not set right in our lifetimes, we know that it will be set right ultimately. And then all of the things that we don't have to worry about a lot of things because we know that Jesus Christ, when he comes back, is going to right all wrongs.
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In fact, one way to look at this is that a great deal of injustice in the world will not be corrected until Jesus Christ comes back.
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We're getting close to the end here, so I want to do another couple of things here, touch on very quickly.
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We've touched on the sense of urgency because this is the next great era in God's redemptive history, and it's near.
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And when he says the time is at hand, the Greek word there at that point is kairos, which means an epoch or an era.
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It's not chronos, which means clock time. He's not talking about the time of day.
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He's talking about the era in God's plan. And Christ's return is the next thing on the timetable.
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You look at God's Gantt chart up in heaven. That's the next item. That's the next milestone. And so why is he delaying?
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Well, the Bible tells us he's delaying so that everyone who has been elected to salvation will come to him.
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But there's going to be a time when the last one, the last sheep, is into the sheepfold.
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And once that happens, it's Katie bar the door because all of this is going to happen very suddenly after that event.
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Notice also there's a Trinitarian benediction that goes with this in verses 4 and 5.
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First of all, John talks about him who was and is and is to come. That's a reference to God the
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Father. Then he who has the seven spirits. And in this case, that is a reference to the
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Holy Spirit, not that there are seven Holy Spirits, but seven is the number of fullness.
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And so it's the Holy Spirit in his fullness. And then Jesus Christ, the third member of the
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Trinity, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. And that's firstborn in preeminence, not firstborn in order because there were people who were resurrected from the dead before Jesus Christ was,
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Lazarus for one. But in order of priority or in order of preeminence or in order of importance, if you will,
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Jesus Christ is first. And also the ruler of the kings of the earth, that's Jesus Christ.
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So there you have Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Good point that Charlie made there.
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If you missed that, everyone that was resurrected before Jesus Christ came out of the tomb went back to his earthly body and died again, quite frankly.
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Lazarus died and stayed dead at some point. Jesus Christ was resurrected to his glorified body and his eternal existence at that point.
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Then there's the doxology, which details Christ's work on behalf of believers.
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He released us from our sins by his blood, that's the atonement. He made us a kingdom. That's the sphere of God's rule that we enter at salvation.
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We are currently in the kingdom invisible. And the case is sometimes made that, well, you know, the king is not present with us, which is true.
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That's why we call it the kingdom invisible. For example, just last week,
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Dallas and I were in Canada for the whole week. But we were still citizens of the
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United States even though we were not physically here. Well, we as believers, we are citizens of the kingdom even though the king is not with us and the kingdom visible is not yet here.
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The kingdom invisible is here and it's us. We are priests to God the
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Father, and we have access to the Father directly and not through another. That's what it means to be a priest.
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We have direct access to the Father, and the response is to be glory and dominion forever and ever to him.
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Very quickly now, verse 7 details
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Christ's triumphant return, and this is just a preview. But again, back to the central theme of Scripture itself.
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Now, why is it necessary for Jesus Christ to come again? And we will hit these again, but first of all, to fulfill prophecy.
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The Old Testament is full of prophecies of his return. It is to keep his promise.
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He promised to come back. It is the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.
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All through the New Testament, the Holy Spirit guarantees that Jesus Christ will come back. Everything that the
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Holy Spirit says is true, and he said Jesus Christ would return. It's God's program for the church to receive and reward his believers, receive believers and reward them.
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It's part of God's program for the unbelieving nations because Jesus Christ is going to judge.
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It is part of God's program for Israel. Jesus Christ is going to reign as the son of David over God's earthly people, if you will, and his humiliation demands his return in glory.
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The last view that the unbelieving world had of Jesus Christ was him hanging on a cross, right?
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Humiliated, the lowest form of execution that was possible at the time.
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That's the last view they had of him. So he is going to come back. But this time he's going to come back in glory.
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What did they say at the base of the cross? Come down off the cross? Well, he's going to do that. He just didn't do it right then.
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But it says when he comes back, they're going to recognize who this is. They're going to understand who this is.
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And then judgment of Satan requires Jesus to return, and it's the expectation of believers,
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Titus 2 .13 and 2 Timothy 4 .8. He will come with clouds, and clouds in this case is a reference to the presence of God, not the fluffy stuff, the cumulus that's up there.
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There will be universal recognition of him. We can rest in the absolute certainty of his return.
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His omniscience, his omnipotence, his omnipresence all assure that he is going to return.
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And so these references that come, references to his return occur in Matthew, in Mark, and in Luke, and also warnings to be ready.
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So we're going to stop there today. Again, we're going to take up next Sunday, we're going to take up the message to the churches.
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And then we're going to, after that, we will take up something of the Great Tribulation because, again, we could spend a year on that.
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And then the triumphal return in chapter 19. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we're grateful,
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Lord, that you have not left us in the dark, but you have, in fact, told us how things are going to turn out.
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And so we can rest in that. We can put our trust in you, that you have everything in hand, that nothing is surprising you, that everything is proceeding according to your plan.
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And so, Father, help us to rely on that. Help us to rest in that. Help us to proceed with our lives.
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Help us also, Father, to live holy lives and to constantly be ready for the return of Jesus Christ.