Message Notes for Study and Teaching - Revelation, Sermon One
Revelation - All Things New, Sermon 1: The Blessing of the Book of Revelation: Revelation 1:1-8; 21:5
How can we study this amazing book?
Keep two realities in view - the Alpha and Omega, if you will, of the big picture Revelation unfolds. At the beginning of this apocalypse/prophecy/letter/book, Christ stands with his imperfect, threatened Church. At the end, Christ stands with his perfected, glorious Church, a spotless bride. Between those two realities, the scroll is opened, the seals are broken, the trumpets sound, the bowls are poured out, the dragon is thrown into the lake of fire, and Christ the Risen, Reigning, Returning Savior is seen by all.
Why preach through the Book of Revelation?
There are so many good reasons.
We don’t think about heaven enough;
We don’t think about judgment enough either
We need to be liberated from sensationalism;
We need discernment about the enemy’s strategies;
There are so many good reasons, but the first one is immediately evident. This is God’s word to his people, and it arrives with a beatitude, with a blessing.
Blessed is the one who reads… blessed are those who hear and heed (“Take to heart…” - NIV).
It is an immeasurable blessing because it is:
I. A Revelation - 1:1-3
Apocalypse - Unveiling
Revelation was written to turn your view of reality inside out. It will undo you.
It's going to upset you; it's going to disturb the soil of your soul - it will plow it up - in order to plant truth in you. It is one of the most disruptive texts we can read. It is God’s invitation to see the world from somewhere closer to his angle.
Revelation will say that some of the poor are incredibly rich
Revelation will undo death - even martyrdom - in your eyes and turn it into the first resurrection, from a loss into a victory.
Revelation will show us that the people who appear to have all the power right now have it on a very brief lease, and many of them will end up in something called the lake of fire.
Revelation insists that the Kingdom of God advances by the suffering, the sacrifice, the witness, the worship, and the praying of God’s people, and only comes fully through a decisive intervention of Jesus Christ at the very moment everything looks to be lost.
“Made it known” - allusion to Daniel 2:28ff
The sign language of Revelation - a dragon, sea and land beasts, wild horses, two cities, two women, angels, trumpets, bowls…
“To all that he SAW…”. 19x - “Look!”, “Behold”, “I turned to SEE the voice…”
Showing us something true that we couldn't see any other way.
And this book shows us the truth through signs. Verse one says God "made it known" to John — signified it, like signal flags across the water. This is the same phrase Daniel used in his word to Nebuchadnezzar about the King’s dream - evocative images that told a story about the present and the future.
So don't come to it frightened, like it's too weird to touch. Come to it as John's first readers did: God is pulling back the curtain on what's really going on in the world, a world that looks bereft of his presence, where we find it hard to be faithful. He’s showing us what’s “Kingdom” - and it's eternal, not temporal.
Why is this "behind the scenes" look so needed?
“And why John’s stark, dramatic, strange and other-worldly symbolism? Why doesn’t he just come out and say what he means? Why the apocalyptic cast of the book? Why the visions that have baffled so many readers of Revelation through the ages? Here is the reason: to shake us out of our chronic failure to see what is actually happening around us all the time and to understand our calling in this world. Far too often it is as though Christians are sleep-walking through a battlefield… In imperceptible ways we are all succumbing to one degree or another to the temptation to accept what we can see, what we touch, what we hear as ultimate reality even when we know it is not. The visible trumps the invisible every day in our hearts and lives. The tangible trumps the intangible. The temporal trumps the eternal. How many of us must admit that far, far too much of the time we live as if the Almighty were not working out his purposes of grace and judgment in the world with a view to bringing its entire history suddenly to a dramatic, catastrophic close? We chat, we shop, we eat and drink, we make small talk while multitudes…slip off to hell, while the great prospect of heaven remains so dim to us that we can go for days, weeks without thinking a serious thought about it. You cannot live the Christian life this way, says John. - Robert Rayburn
Surrounded by a society bent on their overthrow, and behind the scenes an old enemy doing all he can - throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at them - to derail their mission, discredit their testimony, and destroy their faith.
Great weapons: Intimidation of Persecution by the Powers they could see; Seduction of Affluence and Immorality and Compromise with the culture around them; the Subversion of the church by False leaders and doctrine.
How can we stay faithful under this onslaught? How do we “overcome”? Revelation is written to show us how.
II. A Revelation of Jesus Christ - 1:1, 4-7
We need “Nature Eyes” - to see what we might otherwise miss as we hike or drive through the forests and mountains. To read Revelation rightly, we need “Throneroom Eyes” - to read it revealing CHRIST! To have eyes for Jesus in the text.
“Jesus” - 7x
“Jesus Christ” - 7x
The Lamb - 28x
The Throne - 49x
The Faithful Witness (Substitute for Sin), the Firstborn of the Dead (Conqueror of Death), Ruler of the Kings of the Earth (the King of Glory at the Father’s right hand), Son of Man coming in the clouds (reigning now who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead). This is who He is - the Redeeming, Risen, Reigning, and Returning Savior and King of Glory.
“Every eye will see him… and wail…”
Revelation is LOUD! It’s filled with trumpet blasts and shouts and songs and raging battles. There are at least 14 Hymns - and you need them ALL!
Hymns - Crown Him With Many Crowns, Lo He comes with clouds descending…, For All the Saints…, Holy, Holy, Holy
Why an apocalypse? It’s a SIGN OF CONTRADICTION. REVELATION IS FIRST CONTRADICTION - and then it becomes CONFIRMATION AND COMFORT.
It is God’s wake-up call to his sleeping Church! LOOK! GET UP! THE BATTLE IS RAGING! THE KING IS COMING!
This is a homecoming for those who love him; a reckoning for those who don't. We won’t be wailing when we see him; we’ll be dancing with joy. This is our blessed hope.
So when the beasts rise from the sea in the chapters ahead, and the bowls are poured out, and the numbers pile up, remember this word. These are signs. And every sign in this book points the same direction, back to where we start this morning, back to where every faithful reading of Revelation must return: to Christ himself - the one who was and is and is to come, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was dead and is alive forevermore, the one who is, even now, making all things new.
III. A Revelation of Jesus Christ for Us - 1:4-8
This isn't a book about people far away or about events in their distant future. This prophecy was for them, back then, because “the time was near.” That said, what is written here, while speaking to very specific situations and peoples, still speaks to us here and now, and looks ahead to the great and final day. The first coming of Jesus and all that brought about is the initial part of the story that his second coming finishes. What we read here covers both ends of the story.
Look at verse four: John writes, "to the seven churches." Real people. Real churches, in real trouble — some of them poor, some of them scared, some of them compromising, some of them barely hanging on. And Jesus doesn't send this revelation to angels in heaven. He sends it to them. To struggling, ordinary Christians.
Which means he sends it to us too. Whatever you're carrying this morning - fear, weariness, doubt, a besetting sin, a hard year - this book was written for people just like you. Because the one being unveiled here is the Redeeming, Risen, Reigning, and Returning Savior, coming to make all things new. Every Christian in every Church needs the blessing of this letter.
A suffering church in Nigeria or Egypt
A small church struggling to hang on in an inner-city Detroit neighborhood
A vibrant church in an affluent business district in New York
A house church in China
A movement of small persecuted churches in India or Iran
A mission-minded church in Boca Raton, FL
He LOVES us!
Everyone is looking for the face that is looking for them.
That face is the face of Jesus.
His love is manifest in his redeeming, reigning labor and will be seen in the glory of his return.
So hear it again, one more time, the way John heard it: "Behold, I am making all things new." He said it once at the beginning of your new life in him. He's saying it now to remind you. And he'll say it again on the day he comes.
He redeems our past. He rules the present. He holds the future in which every eye will see him, with all of the lamentation and celebration of that day -
The one who is and was and is to come.
Where will you stand on that day?
Trust him now - the Crucified, Risen, Reigning, Returning King and Savior of the world.