Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, reality television is all the rage these days.  It’s very popular.  In fact, one of the programs I like to tune into once in a while is called “Undercover Boss”.  Have you ever seen that one?  It’s a fascinating storyline.  It features high-level corporate executives who, sort of, slip clandestinely into their own companies.  They disguise themselves.  They go under cover and move into the working ranks of their own companies to try to figure out, kind of, what’s going on down in the trenches, so to speak, and then to come out and make some improvements.  One of the things that they do is they, again, disguise themselves and then try to get hired by one of their own employees.  And the employees don’t know what’s going on.  They don’t know who it is.  They assume it’s a different identity.  And then they get to work alongside that employee.  My favorite part of the program is actually the end, what they call “the big reveal”.  This is the time when the employees get invited to corporate headquarters under the idea that they’re gonna meet with the CEO and discuss some things.  And they’re sitting there in the board room, and suddenly the boss walks in.  And you should see the jaws drop at that moment as they kind of recognize behind the disguise who this is, or sometimes he just has to explain himself.  “I’m so-and-so, you know, that worked with you, but I’m really the president and CEO of the company.”  It’s called “the big reveal”.  And then the program goes on from there.  Well, I mean no disrespect to our Lord Jesus Christ, but in one sense, when He came from heaven to this earth, He was an undercover boss.  He veiled His deity.  His disguised His deity in a sense.  The scripture tells us that He kind of put that aside and came clothed in human flesh.  I guess that was His disguise, right?  And there was only one time in all of His ministry where He pulled back the veil, as it were, and showed three of His disciples, Peter, James and John, who He really was in all of His glory.  It’s called the Mount of Transfiguration, where the scripture says when Jesus sort of gave them a glimpse inside who He really was that His clothes brightened up whiter than the whitest of whites.  And that’s when old Peter says, “Hey, this is a good place to be.  Let’s just hang out here for a while and build a tabernacle or two.”  And Jesus closed off the view of His glory, and they moved on from there.  The only other time in the pages of scripture where we get a picture of who Jesus really is in all of His glory is in the revelation of Jesus Christ and in this last book of the Bible.  In fact, the word “revelation”, literally it’s the Greek word apokalupsis where we get our word apocalypse.  And it means not what you probably think it means.  It means “to unveil” or “to reveal”.  Now, I know in our culture the word apocalypse kind of has a sobering and dire meaning.  And Hollywood has grabbed onto it, and they’ve created all kinds of movies and storylines that have end-of-world scenarios to them.  And we think of something apocalyptic as something really bad and terrible that’s happening.  That may be definition number two or three in the Webster’s.  But the real meaning of this word “apocalypse” is “the unveiling.  The big reveal, we might say.  And so the revelation of Jesus Christ, as it were, suggests that something that was previously veiled to human understanding has been revealed or unveiled.  It also suggests that Jesus Christ is the source of all revelation.

0:04:11.8

You do understand there are two ways we can know about something, don’t you?  Two ways that we know things.  Scholars calls this epistemology, the science of knowing things.  We know things, perhaps, by human reason.  But human reason has its limitations, does it not?  The other way we know things in through divine revelation.  It’s when God, who is the great keeper of secrets and mysteries, chooses to unveil something.  Chooses to reveal something that was not previously revealed.  Chooses to unveil something that was previously veiled.  In other words, autonomous human reason cannot unveil what God has veiled.  All right?  We would know nothing about the future if God had not revealed it to us.  If He had not chosen to give us the revelation of Jesus Christ.  Human reason would never unveil the future.  Oh, you have all kinds of prognosticators and other predictors of the future, but, at best, maybe 1 out of 10 they get.  The standard in scripture for God and His prophets is 100% correct anytime they predict the future.  Because, again, God alone is the keeper of secrets and mysteries.  And, remember, the word “mystery” in the Bible is about something that was once concealed but is now revealed.  And God chooses when and how and to what extent He pulls back the veil and reveals things to us.  The revelation of Jesus Christ, which we hold in our hands, came to us from God the Father to the Son by means of the Holy Spirit and to an angel who delivered it to a guy named John the apostle.  The same John, the Bible says, whom Jesus loved.  He had a very special relationship with Jesus as one of His disciples, as one of His apostles.  But this is the John who wrote the Gospel of John, who later in his life was exiled to the island of Patmos, which was the Roman Empire’s Alcatraz.  They sent dissidents out to Patmos, and they sent John there.  A cruel emperor named Domitian, who set out to destroy Christianity, thought he would do it by sending John out to Patmos.  And it was on the island of Patmos in about 95 A.D. that John received the revelation of Jesus Christ.  He wasn’t sitting there in his prison and in his cave and reaching into his human reason about the future.  No, it was revealed to him.  It was unveiled to him by divine revelation.  That’s how we know anything about the future.  And when God reveals something about the future, we can go to bank on it.  It is 100% trustworthy.  By the way, John was exiled to Patmos because he faithfully bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ.  A reminder to us that when we live faithfully for Jesus, it might cost us something.  It cost all of the disciples, tradition tells us, their very lives and John this season of exile on Patmos.  And as anti-Christian sentiment is on the rise, not only in these United States but around the world, we can expect that perhaps as we reach and race toward the end of the age that it might cost us something to be followers of Jesus Christ as well.

0:07:39.0

So the revelation of Jesus Christ.  By the way, this is also a book that promises a blessing.  It’s unique in that sense.  I mean, we’re blessed anytime we read the Word of God.  But only the book of Revelation says this.  Verse 3, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy.”  I’m a blessed man this morning.  Do you know that?  Because I’m standing up here.  I’m reading aloud the Word.  But you’re blessed too, because it goes to and say, “And blessed are those who hear,” who listen to the reading of scripture, “and who keep what is written in it.”  So we don’t want to just be hearers of the Word this morning.  We want to be doers of the Word as well and to put it into practice.  And then John says these words, “For the time is near.”  The time is near.  Now, he wrote this 2000 years ago.  In what sense was the time near then?  And in what sense is it near 2000 years later?  I mean, that’s a fair question, isn’t it?  Because there are a lot of people who are saying, “Oh, where is the promise of His coming?  What do you mean it’s near?”  Well, something can be near, meaning it’s immediately around the corner.  Or something can be near in the sense that it’s next.  And that’s the meaning that John has here.  What John is writing down per the revelation of God and all the future events in Bible prophecy as God works out the end of the age and His divine plans and purpose, what John is saying is that these are the next events on God’s prophetic calendar.  And that should make every one of us get on the edge of our seats and lean in a little bit.  You know, you can be on the phone with the utility company and they say you’re next in line.  And, you know, 45 minutes later you’re still waiting.  We’ve all had that experience before.  That’s kind of like it is as the body of Christ.  We know these are the next events on God’s prophetic calendar, but we’re waiting, aren’t we?  We’re waiting, we’re waiting.  We seem to be on hold.  We’re waiting in hope and in faith for the return of Jesus Christ, just as the Hebrew people did for many, many years in the Old Testament waiting for from first coming of Messiah.

0:09:58.4

Now, what John does in these opening paragraphs is he gets us ready for a discussion about future events in Bible prophecy and on planet earth.  And he does so anchoring our thoughts in the past and the present works of Jesus Christ. Remember, this is the revelation of Jesus Christ.  He’s the main character of this book.  And His second coming, as we find out, is the central event in future Bible prophecy in the midst of a lot of exciting events and sometimes heart-stirring events that we’ll talk about as we get into the book of Revelation.  But it’s all about Jesus.  And He wants us to anchor our thoughts about the future in the past and in the present works of Jesus Christ.  Let me show you what I mean.  First, by talking about the past works of Jesus, revealing His past works.  John does this beginning in verse 4.  He says, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.”  Now, that’s enough right there to just pause and ponder a little bit the past works of Jesus Christ that John reveals to us here.  It doesn’t take long for the holy trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to explode onto the scene here in the book of Revelation. It says, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him…”  There’s the first two members of the trinity.  Then by verse 4 he even introduces the Holy Spirit by mentioning the seven spirits who are before the throne.  What’s that all about?  You say, “Well, I thought there was only one Holy Spirit.  Are there seven Holy Spirits?”  No, there’s only one God who expresses Himself in three distinct persons and personalities, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But there seem to be fuller dimensions of the Spirit of God.  This reference to the seven spirits is probably a reference to the Old Testament book of Isaiah 11:1-2.  Just write those down in your notes there.  This is a messianic passage that speaks of the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  Listen to this.  It says, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his root shall bear fruit.  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”  Again, this does not reference seven different Holy Spirits, but rather the depth and the dimension of the Spirit of God.  Just a reminder that His depth and His dimension as God is really beyond our human understanding.  But John is simply just writing down what was revealed to him.  And he says here that there were seven dimension of the Spirit of God gathered around His throne.  Just boggling to the mind, and it’s not the first thing that’s gonna boggle our minds as we go through the book of Revelation.

0:13:18.7

But then he goes on in verse 5 to talk about Jesus.  And three specific things he wants to anchor our thoughts in.  First of all, that Jesus is this faithful witness.  He says, “From Jesus Christ the faithful witness.”  This speaks of the truth that is embodied in the person of Jesus Himself.  He is a faithful witness.  Faithful in the sense that He tells us the truth.  And not only tells us the truth, He is the truth.  Because he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  Only the one who embodies the truth and is the truth can we trust to tell us the truth, even the truth about the future.  And, again, there are a lot of prognosticators out there trying to predict the future.  Only Jesus is the faithful witness who is the truth and who tells us the truth about the future.  I’m reminded of the conversation Jesus had with Pilate, one of the Roman leaders who, humanly speaking, sent Jesus to the cross.  Remember, Pilate looked at Jesus as said, “What is truth?”  And we don’t know really from the tone—you can’t read it in the text—whether Pilate was honestly investigating or whether he was scoffing.  You know, “What is truth,” right?  It’s kind of like people do today.  “What do you mean truth?  Your truth is your truth.  My truth is my truth,” we say in this relativistic, pluralistic culture of ours.  But Jesus turned back to Pilate, and He said in John 18:37, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth,” He says, “listens to me.” You want to know the truth about the future?  You need to listen to Jesus.  You want to know the truth about anything?  You need to listen to Jesus.  He is the truth, and He will always tell you the truth.  He is a faithful witness.

0:15:23.1

Secondly, John says He is the firstborn of the dead.  Not only does Jesus, you know, just dominate everything with regard to the truth, but also with regard to life.  He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  And no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  He also says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  And all of that is in John’s sphere of understanding as he pens the words He is “the firstborn of the dead”, meaning He is the first to rise again from the dead in glory, in His glorified being.  There were others in scripture who came back from the dead.  More of a resuscitation than a resurrection because they continued to life on this earth and died again.  Not Jesus.  He rose in glory and ascended to the Father.  And He’s the firstborn of the dead, the first of many more resurrections to come.  And if we had time this morning, I could take you through seven different resurrections mentioned in the New Testament.  Five of which are still future.  In the past is a resurrection of Jesus Christ and something Matthew refers to as some others that came out of the grave at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.  But there are five other future resurrections of the dead, and you and I are in there somewhere should we die before Jesus returns.  Everybody who goes into the grave will rise again one day.  Some to eternal life, and some of eternal death, the Bible says.  But He is the firstborn of the dead.  He is the resurrection and the life.

0:17:01.0

Thirdly, John says He is ruler of the kings on the earth.  This speaks of His absolute authority, His authority.  Jesus said in Matthew 28, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.”  That’s a lot of authority.  In fact, that’s all authority in both places.  I mean, listen to the sphere of His authority.  Heaven and earth.  Nobody has more authority than Jesus does.  So much so that He is the ruler of the kings on the earth.  There’s not a king, there’s not a president nor a prime minister, nor a dictator nor a despot that doesn't hold that position because God in some way either put him there or her there or allowed that person to be there.  Yes, even the dictators and despots.  There was a time in the Old Testament when God used an evil king named Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to accomplish His divine purposes in the life of His chosen people, the nation of Israel.  And it’s not beyond God, even as we race toward the end of the age, to even use a satanically influenced and possessed ruler that will rise from this planet to be a world dictator known as the Antichrist. God will use that, that person, even to accomplish His divine purposes without ever losing a bit of His sovereignty.  You may think the world is spinning out of control, but Jesus is the ruler of the kings on the earth.  And for reasons that He may choose to have that we don’t completely understand, He’s allowing this to happen, or this to happen, or this person to get into office or that person.  Every politician in Washington and the voters that put them into office need to remember that Jesus is the ruler of the kings on earth.  There’s not a position of authority that exists that isn’t under His control.  (0:19:00.0) In fact, Daniel 2:21 says that, “God changes times and season.  He removes king and sets up kings.”  Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.  He turns it wherever he will.”  So God let’s various people lead on planet earth and possess a smidgen of authority for a short period of time without ever losing His sovereignty.  This is Jesus.  This is Jesus like you’ve never seen Him before.  And, by the way, the Jesus John presents here is not the Jesus of your Sunday school lessons.  And I mean no disrespect there.  But this is not the carpenter from Nazareth.  This is not the rugged and renegade rabbi walking the dusty streets of Palestine.  This is not Jesus gathered with the children around Him and a lamb on His shoulder.  This is a picture of (0:20:00.1) the glorified and resurrected Jesus Christ who is coming again in all of His glory.  This is Jesus like we’ve never seen Him before.  The undercover boss unveiled and revealed to us.

0:20:16.2

Second way that John presents Jesus is with regard to His present works.  And let’s read on in verse 5.  “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.”  Just as there were three aspects to His past works, there are three aspects to His present works.  And the first is that He loves us.  He says as much in verse 5.  “To him to who loves us.”  And I’m glad John put that in there.  This is the same John who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, penned the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.”  But this time he says He loves us.  The grammar here is such that this word is in the present tense.  In other words, He presently and continuously loves us.  Yes, God so loved the world, past tense.  But He presently and continually loves us a well.  And that means no matter what you did this week, nothing you did makes Him love you more or less than He presently and continuously does.  He loves you with a perfect love.  And this is why elsewhere in the New Testament, in Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul told us to try to grasp the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the love of God, which surpasses all knowledge, he says.  Why does John, at the beginning of the revelation here, remind us that God loves us?  Well, perhaps because, as we read through this mysterious book, this prophetic book, and we begin to grasp the judgment of God that falls upon this planet as we race toward the end of the age, it may make us wonder, Does God really love us?  And John says, yes, He does.  “To him who loves us.”  Before we get mysterious and complex and scratching our heads and trying to unpack and figure all this out, he just wants us to understand the simplicity.  Jesus loves me, this I know, for the revelation tells me so.  The Bible tells me so.

0:22:29.1

Secondly, He freed us.  It says “To him who loves and has freed us from our sins by his blood.”  Wow, those are important words.  He freed us.  This speaks of the cross of Jesus Christ and His shed blood.  This is love in action.  “What can wash away my sins?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  And you say, “I don’t understand that.”  I don’t either.  I didn’t write the script.  If I were to write the script and come up with a way for us to be rightly related to God and to have our sins forgiven, it wouldn’t involve blood and death and all that.  But the Bible says without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.  And it was through the blood of Jesus Christ and His shed blood on the cross that God freed us from our sins.  You see, sin is addicting, is it not?  And I know as a culture we can probably rattle off four or five, you know, the top addictions out there.  Drugs, alcohol, you know, things like that.  But all sin is addicting.  All sins enslaves us.  And when Jesus came to this earth, He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to set free the captives.”  Do you want to be set free today from that addicting sin?  That sin that does so easily beset you?  That reaches in and grabs you by the throat and slams you to the mat every time?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus will do that.  He has freed us from our sins by the blood.  That’s good news, friends.  That’s good news.  Because there’s gonna be a lot of bloodshed in the latter part of the book of Revelation.  And there’s no blood that cleanses us more.  There’s no blood that frees us like the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on the cross for our sins.  But not a lot of us, I think, really understand this in all of its depth.  You know, I’m told by historians that back shortly after the Civil War period and after the Emancipation Proclamation, many of the slaves in the south either didn’t get the news or they didn’t believe it when they received it.  Because they continued to live as slaves.  Can you imagine that?  Can you imagine somebody coming into the southern states and saying, “The war is over.  The President has issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  You’re free!”  And they had been enslaved for so many years they didn’t know what to do with that.  And many of them, historians tell us, continued to live as slaves.  Again, they either didn’t get the news, or when they received the news, they didn’t believe it.  And that’s the way a lot of us are as believers in Jesus Christ.  He has freed us from our sins by His blood.  What once enslaved you doesn’t enslave you anymore.  It has no authority in your life.  This is the truth of the book of Romans 6 that tells us, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.”  Romans 6:17, “But thanks be to God, that you were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which we were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”  You’re gonna be a slave to something, and so will I.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we’re slaves to righteousness.  And the old besetting sin has no authority in our life.  Now, you can either believe that and live like it, or you can live like an old slave, continually enslaving yourself to the old sin.  John wants us to remember, as the present work of Jesus in our life, that He loves us and He has freed us.  His love shapes our identity.  His freedom gives us a new power to live the Christian life like we can’t live on our own.

0:26:29.5

And then, thirdly, he says He made us.  He “made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.  Amen.”  He made us.  He fitted us for a purpose, for a purpose.  Your life is not meaningless and neither is mine.  And He made us, he says, “a kingdom, priests to his God and Father,” which means He made us to be a royal priesthood, sons and daughters of the King, giving us great purpose in this life.  He loves you.  He freed you. He made you for a purpose.  I mean, does that not give any one of us in this room reason to live and to live victoriously.  And because He made us sons and daughters of the King, do you know we have unique access to this Jesus of the Revelation?  Most of you know I lived in Washington, D.C., for about 10 years.  And like you, I enjoy a lot of the sights and the places to visit.  You can go visit the White House just like anybody else.  You can take an East Wing tour of the White House, and you can you see the Red Room and the Green Room and the Blue Room and whatever other colors there are.  The State Dining Room, you can go visit that.  But you won’t have any access to the President.  Nobody does.  Now, if you know somebody in Congress, they can actually schedule for you a West Wing tour.  This is a little more rare.  I got this opportunity once.  I got to go on a West Wing tour.  It was really fascinating.  The Oval Office is not as big as it looks like on television, but it’s really quite fascinating.  But if you go on a West Wing tour, you can only go when the President is traveling.  Because I don’t have access to the President, and neither do you.  I remember that photograph that was taken during the Kennedy administration.  I think it was a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of President Kennedy sitting behind the Resolute desk there in the Oval Office and this little boy named John John playing at his feet down below, peeking out through the cubby hole.  And you’re thinking, how did that little boy get inside the Oval Office?  Well, there’s a simple answer to that.  That’s his daddy behind the desk.  You have access to such power and authority through relationship.  And that’s how it is in the Christian life.  We are sons and daughters of the King, which is why the writer of Hebrews says, “Come boldly to the throne of grace.”  You study through the book of Revelation and your heart goes pitter patter a few times.  And you wake up in the middle of the night wondering, wow, what’s going to happen to me?  And you cry out at 3:00 in the morning, “Daddy, Daddy!”  And your heavenly Father says, “Yes?”  Day or night, He is accessible to you.  He is accessible to me.  He made us a royal priesthood.  He made us sons and daughters of the King.  And that gives us great privilege and great access to this One who is the Jesus of the revelation.

0:29:41.0

So John is trying to anchor our thoughts in the past works of Jesus, in His present and continuous works in our lives.  Because by verse 7, He’s got us looking into the future.  Listen to this.  “Behold,” he says.  In other words, “Have I got your attention now?”  Behold.  Listen up.  Look up.  He is coming.  “He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.  Even so.  Amen.”  John is so worked up here, he puts a period at the end.  He puts an “amen” there.  He says, “I could stop right here.”  This is exciting stuff, because he is coming again.  And he’s doing the best he can as he writes these words and pens the revelation that has been given to him to bring about an arresting attention in our spirit.  “Behold,” he says, “he is coming.”  There is no event on God’s future timetable more central to the end of the age than the second coming of Jesus Christ.  And John skirts back a lot of events that are recorded actually in chapters 6 through 19 of the book of Revelation that we will go into much depth on.  But he skirts through all kinds of events there to bring us to the climactic event, which is the return of Jesus Christ.  Because Jesus is no only temptation central figure of human history, but He is also the main character of the book of Revelation.  And His return is the blessed hope of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Yes, we’ve been waiting for 2000 years, waiting in hope and in faith for His near return.  But He is coming, John says.  He is on His way.

0:31:45.2

He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him.  That’s very important and descriptive language here, because it differentiates the second coming of Jesus Christ from another event in Bible prophecy known as the rapture of the Church.  And I need to say, and I’ll probably do it many times throughout this series, but there are good, godly people who disagree on matters of Bible prophecy.  I mean, it is a herculean effort to get your mind and your heart wrapped around the prophetic nature of scripture.  Again, 25% of the Bible when it was written was about future events.  Half of those future events have been fulfilled specifically.  But it’s a lot to get your arms around.  And good, godly people that we might be in disagreement with order some events differently.  But as I understand the ordering of end time events, there are two separate times that bookend a seven-year period of time.  Two separate events that bookend seven years known as the Tribulation period, known as Daniel’s 70^th week, known as Jacob’s trouble.  And those two events are the second coming of Jesus Christ at the back end of those seven years, and the rapture of the Church at the front end.  I say two separate events because when the apostle Paul speaks with detail about the rapture of the Church in 1 Thessalonians 4—and you need to go there and read that for yourself—he talks about Jesus coming in the clouds, but in the twinkling of an eye.  He also refers to that twinkling of an eye in 1 Corinthians 15.  Here John says He will come, and every eye will see Him.  We’re not at the rapture, not when He comes to snatch His Church out of this earth and it happens as quickly as your eye blinks.  Not every eye will see Him, but only those who know Him.  And Paul says that the dead in Christ will rise first, one of those seven resurrections of the dead.  The dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with Him in the air.  It’ll happen so quickly, in the twinkling of an eye.  That’s not what John’s referring to here in Revelation 1:7.  He’s referring to something that happens seven years later called the second coming of Jesus Christ, when He comes with His Church in the clouds.  And every eye on planet earth will see Him.  He’s not trying to come quickly in the twinkling and move in and move out.  No, He’s coming for every eye to see Him, John says, even those who pieced him.  Certainly a reference to the Jews, many of whom deny Jesus as their messiah.  Certainly a reference to the Roman leaders who, humanly speaking, put Him on the cross.  But every eye will see Him, “and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him,” John says.

0:35:05.3

Several years ago when I was in Israel for the first time, I was traveling with our group.  And we had a wonderful Jewish guide with us.  She’ll be traveling with us again in November if you’re interested in coming along.  How’d you like that little commercial announcement in the message that quickly?  But Bernice is a wonderful lady.  You know, admittedly, she’s not a follower of Jesus Christ.  She is a committed Jew and committed to her Judaism.  And she pulled me aside one time.  We were standing outside the city of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives.  And she says, “Well, you know, Pastor, we’re both waiting for the Messiah to come.”  And I said, “Well, yeah, I understand that.”  I said, “But when He comes, you Jews will say, ‘Welcome.’  When He comes, we Christians will say, ‘Welcome back.’”  Because we see Jesus as having fulfilled all those Old Testament messianic prophecies.  And we have the ability on this side of the cross and the resurrection and as New Testament believers to read Old Testament messianic prophecies and see the first and second comings of Jesus Christ.  And those are detailed in even more detail in the New Testament in Paul’s writings and elsewhere.  Even the rapture of the Church is implied in the book of Revelation.  And I’ll show you why and how in a few weeks.  But John here is talking about the central event.  He skirts past the rapture of the Church.  He skirts past the rising up of a world leader known as the Antichrist and the negotiated agreement he makes on behalf of the nation of Israel.  He moves past an event known from Daniel’s time as the abomination of desolation, where that world leader goes into the Jewish temple, which is rebuilt during this seven-year period of time.  He desecrates it.  He sets himself up for worship and become the worshipped world dictator.  John moves past the latter part of the Tribulation period known as the Great Tribulation and past the war to end all wars known as the Battle of Armageddon.  And he brings us to this final event known as the second coming of Jesus Christ.  And he wants us to stand in awe and to have a sense of worship in our hearts at who this Jesus is.  Because the next verse He speaks to us, in verse 8.  And He says, “’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’”  The apostle John, who received the revelation and wrote it own for us, is also the John who wrote the Gospel of John.  And in the Gospel of John he records the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus.  “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the good shepherd.  I am the way, the truth, and the life.  I am the resurrection and the life.”  And so on.  Well, here’s the eighth one.  And how fitting that John is the one that records it.  Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.  I’m the first and the last.”  In other words, “Nothing starts or ends without Me.”  Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  And it start without Jesus despite what the Jehovah’s Witness say, that Jesus is a created being.  No, He’s not a created being.  He is the creator.  Check out Colossians 1.  Nothing starts, nothing began on planet earth without Jesus.  In fact, He never had a beginning.  The Bible says, “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”  He is an eternal God without beginning, without end.  But as time-bound creatures, we can only fathom in our minds time and not eternity.  He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  And He’s not only that, but He is the one who is and who was and who is to come.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever.  And He is the Almighty God.  Understand who this revelation is about before we ever get the details of timelines and events and all the juicy stuff in Revelation that we get excited about.

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I told you it was a big reveal.  And we’re not even done with it.  We’ve got to come back next week, as John goes on to reveal things about this Jesus, to see Jesus as you have never seen Him in your Sunday school lessons before.  We’ll see it here in the revelation.  Why?  Because God in His sovereignty, the keeper of secrets and mysteries, chose to pull back the veil enough for us to see Jesus in all of His glory and to see things into the future.  The things that must come, John says, is what this book is all about.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You so much for Your Word.  It’s just beyond excitement, sometimes beyond comprehension, what You have given to us in the pages of Your Word as You have chosen to sovereignly pull back the veil and reveal to us things that we could never understand to grasp in our limited human reason.  Father, we’ve heard Your Word this morning.  We’ve sensed Your Spirit teaching us.  Now help us to respond.  Help us to respond as people who know You love us.  You’ve freed us.  And You’ve made us for a divine purpose.  And to live that out in a very intentional kind of way today.  It’s easy for us, Father, to look at the world spinning out of control and to think, wow, who’s got their hand on the lever here?  But the picture You give us of Your son Jesus calms our hearts, chases the fears away.  And I just thank You that all these things that we’re gonna talk about will happen one day without You losing even a smidgen of Your sovereignty.  Father, I pray for anybody here today for whom today is a day of salvation, because You’ve brought them to this place and to this moment.  And this same Jesus who loves us and freed us and made us for a purpose is calling perhaps, perhaps you.  You’re here at Atlantic Shores today not by accident, but maybe to hear a message like this and just a brief invitation to say come to Jesus.  Come to the cross as a sinner who needs a savior, as a slave who wants to be free and forgiven.  Free and forgiven.  That’s the promise to all who are enslaved by their sins.  And that happens only through the blood of Jesus Christ and His cross and through His resurrection.  Father, I just pray that You would make that happen this morning as You do Your work to call men and women and young people in this place to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning.  And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.

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