The Revelation of Jesus Christ

AI Transcript

Amen. Amen. How are we Okay, good. Buckle up. Go to Revelation chapter one if you have a Bible. I hope you do. If not, we do have some Revelation books. If you're a note taker, you can get up and grab one right now. This is the scripture journal that we provide for you in the back there. But Revelation one. And as I always say, if you, if that's not the last book of your Bible, come talk to me after this sermon.

We'll just chat. We'll chat about that. But Revelation 1, I'll go ahead and read the first chapter. Listen carefully. This is God's Word.

Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near. John to the seven churches that are in Asia.

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 the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priest to his God and father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold.

He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him even so. Amen. I am the Alpha and Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty. I John your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the island called Patmos.

on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna, to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands.

And in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest, the hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand, he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun, shining in full strength.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys to of death and Hades. Right therefore the things that you have seen and those that are those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands.

The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's Lord again we we come before you under your word. Lord we ask that you would give us what we need most in this series today that you would give us Jesus Lord help us to see and savor him in our time together and in this week.

We pray in Jesus name, amen, amen. Well, as we start a new series, maybe you're asking, why now? Why do Revelation now? And maybe depending on your background and where you come from, and maybe churches you've been involved with before, maybe you're thinking,

Maybe Mark's unlocked some things. Maybe, you know, the whole thing with Hamas and Iran and the bear of the North Russia coming down and all these things. Maybe Mark has pieced some things together and he's going to show us what's about to happen. Sorry to disappoint. That's not why we're doing this book. And I have not unlocked any special codes or clues to that. So that's not why I'm doing this book. Now, for 25 years as a pastor, this has been the

the number one requested book for me to preach on and I've never done it until now. 25 years. I think that the request comes from some good motivation and maybe not so good motivation sometimes depending on the request. I think it's good motivation to be like, hey, this is part of God's word. And especially in the New Testament, we understand the rest. Like we can get that, but Revelation is a different beast, no pun intended, all together.

We want to know what God has in His Word. That's a good motivation. Now, oftentimes I think the request is more speculation. What's going to happen? How is this going to roll out? Entertainment even. Like, this is bizarre. And indeed, there are a lot of bizarre things happening in Revelation. It's one of the reasons I've been hesitant for 25 years to jump into this. There are four creatures around God's throne, each with different faces.

There are locusts from the abyss shaped like horses prepared for battle with human faces, women's hair, lion's teeth, iron breastplates, wings like thundering chariots and tails like scorpions. Revelation nine. A beast rising from the sea with 10 horns and seven heads, blasphemous names written on him. Leopard-like body, bear's feet and lion's mouth. Revelation 13. There's the beast from the earth who performs signs, makes fire fall from heaven and forces everyone to receive a mark.

in Revelation 13. There's the woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars giving birth while a great red dragon with seven heads waits to devour her child in Revelation 12. There's the great prostitute Babylon. She's riding a scarlet beast dressed in purple and scarlet drunk with the blood of the saints. In Revelation 17 there are

There are hailstones weighing about 100 pounds falling from heaven in this book, Revelation 16, a new Jerusalem descending from heaven as a perfect cube shining with jewels and with streets of pure gold like glass. And at the center of this book, there's a slain yet standing lamb with seven horns and seven eyes taking the scroll from the throne. What is going on in this book?

Often when people ask me, you do that book? My first response is, it's probably not what you think. It's probably not what you think it is. What do you mean by that? said, the book of Revelation is made up of 402 verses and there are over 500 direct quotes or allusions to Old Testament passages. You cannot understand the book of Revelation without being steeped in and understanding the whole of the Old Testament. And as a people, a new covenant people,

In the West, we are not really steeped in the whole of the Old Testament. Therefore, we are left with speculation and wondering what's going on. so this has been some of my hesitancy to teach this book. And then after all, I have some good company in church history. Martin Luther and John Calvin, they taught extensively, wrote commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, and both of them barely touch revelation at all.

So listen, if Calvin and Luther are like, that's too much for me, who am I? Mark Auschwitz in Parker, Colorado. No. So I've been intimidated. Yeah, I'll admit that upfront. And I am still intimidated. I am on a journey of learning with you on this. But if we neglect any part of God's Word, that creates a vacuum for other teachings to come in, maybe not so helpful teachings to come in that can kind of mislead us.

Now the most popular understanding of Revelation and the Bible, particularly among Western American evangelicals that are non-denominational, so we would fall under that, the most popular understanding is a world view or a biblical view called dispensationalism. It is relatively a new view.

that has come about in the last couple centuries. It isn't a historic view. It isn't what the church has taught for 2000 years. in 1830, a guy named John Nelson Darby kind of systematized the Bible to be dispensations, that God works in different ways throughout history and throughout his word for his people. And so he had a very strong distinction between Israel and the church.

He had a futurist interpretation of the book of Revelation. this was all to take place sometime in the future. And he taught a pre-tribulational rapture. That before a tribulation comes, the true church of God will be raptured up into heaven and then tribulation comes. Well, his...

His teachings kind of spurred on a lot of interest in end times thinking and theology. There were a lot of Bible conferences and seminars. 1909, there was basically a study Bible called the Schofield Reference Bible. And it codified John Nelson Darby's teachings so that now you had a study Bible that taught these dispensations. Fast forward in 1918 to 1940s and the rest of the 19th century.

Many Bible conferences teaching this and many Bible colleges, seminaries and parachurch ministries were founded in this time and most of them, probably the majority of them were founded on this paradigm of dispensation. In fact, I was part of one of them after seminary. So I get that. In 1970, Hal Lindsey wrote a book called The Late Great Planet Earth and in it he shows this in graphic detail how

the book of Revelation comes alive and how the end is going to come. there's a lot of fear there, but like there's all these things that are going to happen. Also in the 60s and 70s, the Jesus movement begins to take place on the East, rather the West Coast of America. All these hippies start to get saved and they come into these churches called Calvary Chapel. And Calvary Chapel holds to this dispensational teaching of how we are to understand.

the end times and this book in particular. More recently, the Left Behind books and movies with Kirk Cameron have repopularized this idea of how the end will come and how we are to read the book of Revelation. Now, I want to just say this. I love my dispensational brothers and sisters. I love them. I've been mentored by them. I've learned a lot from them. I have a deep respect and appreciation for them. They tend to

love the Word of God. They love Jesus. I just think that they have a bad interpretation and a bad interpretation of this book in particular leads to a missing out on what God actually has for his church not only back then but throughout the centuries and today. So with that said depending on your background and maybe where you went to school or where you went to college.

church or maybe this this view this dispensationalism is all that you've ever been taught. So what I'm about to say might sound like man I'm really off base here but just stick with me. Stick with me. It's six months. You can handle it for six months. Worst case scenario you're going to learn what the church historic has has held to for 2000 years. You're going to learn why both now and throughout history when the church has been oppressed

and persecuted, they've turned to this book for comfort and hope. And it's not because they're trying to figure out how America plays out in all this thing. No, there's a message for God's people down through the ages in this book and for us today. So that's worst case, best case scenario, you will be deeply encouraged and strengthened in your trust and love for Jesus.

This book was not written to entertain us or to fuel our speculation. It was written to strengthen Christians. Then, always, and now to remind us that we are in the midst of a battle raging all around us. This is what this book is for. So as we jump into the text in an opening series, you always want to properly understand any book of the Bible. You need to do some work. What's the context?

Who is the audience? Why was it written? These are important questions to understand before we can start to say, how does this apply to where I'm at here and now? Now, one of the ways that we do that is we ask the question, what's the genre of the book? Well, how was it written? So for example, the book of Proverbs is proverbial truth. That's interpreted different than say poetry in the Psalms or narrative literature of the gospels or Exodus or.

apocalyptic literature of Ezekiel or Daniel and so on. What is the genre? And then that starts to help inform how we're to read this. Now, Revelation is unique because it actually has three, three genres. It's a letter, it's a prophecy, and it's an apocalypse. A letter, a prophecy, and an apocalypse. And they all kind of come together. So that makes it a little bit more difficult for us to piece out. But nonetheless, we have to deal with each one of those.

Look at verse four, it says,

John. So this this may be John the apostle who is with Jesus or maybe another John who was a leader of the church in the first century. We're not sure for sure. We're not for sure but it doesn't matter. He is a leader of the church and it says John to the seven churches that are in Asia and in chapter in verse 11 says write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia.

and to Laodicea. First and foremost, this book is a letter. Like the other letters of the New Testament, we call them epistles, it is a letter from a pastor to a church, or in this case, churches that he loves. It's a letter that John wants to write to encourage and instruct the churches. So as a letter, that means it's to real people from a real person to real places facing real problems in need of

real encouragement. So this this at its base means it cannot mean to us the book of Revelation cannot mean to us what it did not mean to them. This is Bible interpretation 101. It can't what we come to in this cannot be totally foreign to the first recipients of it. That's not how we read the Bible how narcissistic our Western individualistic lenses that we think this was written to us.

No, it was written for us, but not to us. Does that make sense? It was written to the people of God through the ages, but this is not about us. Revelation is not trying to figure out America's place in history. I'm sorry. It's just not. Let me give you some historical context. After the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus in about the year 33 AD, the church experiences growth and the gospel is expanding.

There are pockets of persecution we read about in Acts, but overall the church is expanding throughout the Western Empire. And it is planning churches and it's going from one place to the next. Peace, prosperity, expansion. Well in the year 64 AD, Nero in Rome goes crazy and he burns down half of Rome and the Romans are about to revolt and put him to death and so he blames Christians. And now in 65 AD, the first state-sponsored persecution of Christians unleashes and it was horrific.

be a follower of Christ. It meant that if you don't deny Christ you could have your land taken from you, you could be exiled, you could be put to death in graphic and horrific ways, you could be crucified, you could be fed to lions. Nero would have Christians dipped in oil and then put up on poles and lit on fire so that the Vatican garden, not the Vatican garden, what's the place where the Vatican's at? Yeah, anyway, where the Vatican is currently at.

It was a garden and he would light Christians on fire so that they could the Romans could have nice stroll in the garden at night. This was real persecution. This is real pain. Well, in the year 70 AD might be the darkest year in all of church history. The Romans roll in with their army into Jerusalem. They're tired of the different revolts by the Jews, and so they decide to decimate Jerusalem.

They destroy and take out the temple. destroy just all of Jerusalem. Those people scatter. In 70 AD, Paul, Peter, and Timothy are all publicly executed as leaders of the church. Can you imagine? In the year 81 AD, a new Caesar rises to the throne. His name is Domitian. And Domitian, like a lot of Caesars before him, was also a megalomaniac, narcissist, and he believed...

the press. believed what everyone said. You're so great, Domitian. He's like, I am great. I'm God. And in fact, here's my decree. I want temples to be constructed all throughout the Roman Empire and all the major cities to my honor. And here's what I want. I want people to come, the Romans to come into the temple, to take a pinch of incense and to throw it on the fire and say, Caesar is Lord. That's all you had to do. Now for the

vast majority of Romans this was no problem at all. They were polytheists, they believed in many gods and after all they were the beneficiaries of the peace and prosperity and the security and the excess and the wealth and the indulgences of Rome and they're like we're not gonna give that up. Yes Caesar is Lord and they do that. This wasn't even a problem for the Jewish people because they would never do that but they were a recognized state historic religion and they weren't they weren't subject to this decree.

They just had to pay a special tax. They always had to just pay these special taxes. But Christians, on the other hand, they did not have such protection. Christians were commanded to go into the temple of the mission and to take the pinch of salt and proclaim Caesar is Lord. But if you do that, you're selling out Jesus because the cry of the Christian is Jesus is Lord and there can only be one Lord.

But now you start to see the pressure that the church is feeling. And if I don't do that, you know, I could, I mean, I could lose my property. could be cast out to an island like Patmos. I could lose my own life. And if I do do that, I get to participate in all the goodness of Rome. I get to enjoy the peace and the roads and all the excesses.

Mark Oshman (20:34.144)

So there's real pressure to give up on Jesus. And this is what has happened to John. see John is on the island of Patmos. It's a labor camp. He apparently will only proclaim Jesus is Lord. They don't have him put to death, at least not initially. Instead, they send him to Patmos because he says Jesus is Lord. And he writes this letter to encourage the church and it becomes this deeply held

and cherished book of the Bible for the persecuted church. Then, always, and now. Over the next couple of centuries, persecutions will break out against the Christians and it will be bad. So we must keep this context in mind if we're to rightly interpret, understand, and then apply this book. We can start to see how even that might apply to us. Have you ever felt any pressure to maintain your

prestige, your job maybe, your status amongst friends, and just kind of put Jesus in a box, your private little personal faith box, then you can start to see, no, Jesus is actually calling us to more than that in this book. So first thing, it's a letter. Second, it's a prophecy. We see this in verse three. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. Blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written.

in it for the time is near. Now again, when we hear the word prophecy, because of the influence of dispensationalism, we almost immediately think future. Prophecies, they get fulfilled in the future. But biblical prophecy, that's actually a minority of cases. That is part of the case and it's part of the case in the book of Revelation. But prophecy in the Bible, both Old Testament and New, is a thus says the Lord. It is a

Forth telling here's what God has to say rather than a foretelling. Here's what's going to happen when you understand that what John is saying is the message I have for you churches doesn't originate with me. It comes through me but it comes from the Lord like all the Old Testament prophets. It is a fourth telling not a four time because how cruel how cruel would it be understanding just the just getting a slight glimpse of the.

the kind of persecution and temptation and trial that the church in the end of the first century was facing. Just bloody death, losing family, losing property, going into exile. How cruel would it be for God to write a letter to these churches and say, hey, don't worry about it. In 2000 years, there's going to be a place called America and it's all going to work out. Well, they don't have any persecution there. And we don't. Listen, no, I better not say anything. That'll get me in trouble.

I was going to say something about the vaccine, but I'm not. Okay. I'm just saying it's not the mark of the beast. Okay. Can I just say that? Listen, if you're worried about being tracked, get rid of your cell phone.

We've to edit this out. But he says, he says in verse one, that this must soon take place. These things must soon take place. And he also says at the anniversary, the time is near. Well, how are we to interpret that? Was John wrong? Because it's been 2000 years. It doesn't seem like it must soon takes place. It doesn't seem like the time is near. And so some will try to...

like skirt that issue by quoting Peter who quotes the Psalms. In 2 Peter 3, 8 he says, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. They're like, see, it's only been two days in God's eyes. Except Peter's talking about God's perspective on time. John is bringing us man's perspective. A day feels like a day for us.

And he says it must soon take place. What's going on here? Well, it is like it is like how Jesus would often teach like in Luke 10 nine when he comes and he says the kingdom of God has come near to you in the coming of King Jesus. The kingdom has also come near. It's already here but not fully here. It's the already not yet tension that we live in right now. And that's how we should understand this book that this.

Word was very much a word for the people that received this. It was very much a word in the fifth and sixth and 12th century. It's very much a word for us. It's an already not yet tension. And this is a word for all Christians through all the ages facing similar trials, tribulations and temptations. It's also so it's a letter, it's a prophecy and then it's an apocalypse. We get this from verse one and really the rest of the book but

The first one in the Greek, word is apokalypsos. It's one word. It says the apokalypsos of Jesus Christ. Apocalypse means revealing. Picture you go to a play and when the curtain opens, that's an apocalypse. It's here it is. It's an apocalypse of Jesus, by Jesus, about Jesus. What's important to know here is that it's not a concealing. It's an apocalypse. It's not a concealing.

So many people come to this book like, there's a mystery here. If we could just unlock the mystery, God has kept it hidden from us. No, God wants us to see something. God wants to reveal things to us. God doesn't want to hide things from us in this book. It's a revealing. And one of the big ideas of this book is that things are not only as they seem. Things are not only as they seem. I should have that on the slide here.

And I put not only as they seem because the revelation does not deny that your temptation, your trial, your suffering is real. It's real. Like it's real when you see your loved ones dragged off because they follow Jesus and they're put to death. That's real pain, real suffering, but that's not all that is happening in that moment. See, these are dark days for the church at the end of the first century. The gospel is under pressure. The gospel means

Good news, but it doesn't feel like good news. It doesn't feel like this is, God is for me. It's the gospel, we talk about the kingdom advancing. It doesn't seem like the kingdom of God is advancing, but shrinking. It seems like the Roman kingdom is advancing. We talk about Jesus is king, but where's the evidence of His kingship? Where's He doing? How do we know He's king? This is what they're wrestling with. It seems like Rome is winning. They're debauchery.

their false worship, their power, their oppression. It seems like they're winning, but the book of Revelation is things are not what they seem or not only what they seem. There's a cosmic battle raging and Jesus, Jesus stands among his churches. Did you see that? We'll come back to that. Apocalyptic literature is not like a letter or a prophecy. We read a letter from beginning to end, a prophecy, here's what the Lord says. Okay, we've got that.

Apocalyptic literature is different. If you've ever tried to read the second half of Daniel or parts of Ezekiel or Isaiah, you're like, man, something else is going on here with this. It's not what we're used to in our post-enlightenment Western minds. We want things to progress in a systematic way. And that's why it appeals, why dispensationalism appeals to us. this happens, this happens, this happens, and then this happens. That's not how Revelation was written.

Rather, the question that we should ask is not what happens next in the book of Revelation, or the question we need to constantly ask is what does John see next and what does John hear next? And what he sees next and hears next isn't necessarily what happens next. Whoever's running my slides, can you go back to the very first slide, the title slide? Revelation is broken up into five windows. John's going to open up five windows, we're gonna...

look through these windows and we're going to see some bizarre things and a lot of stuff happening and they're kind of cyclical. About five times it looks like the end is here, like everything's getting wrapped up only to open another window and to start again and the windows aren't in chronological order. Let me show you. At the theological crux of this book, at the center of the book is Revelation 12. It is the fourth window. So there you go, the fourth window.

Like what's going on there? We got a baby and a dragon. it's bizarre. It's a red dragon. It's got these horns. He's frothing out the mouth. This woman is about to give birth and the dragon is about to devour the baby. But before the dragon can devour the baby, the baby is taken up into that throne room of God and the woman is taken out to the wilderness and protected. What in the world is happening there? Well, John is describing with graphic imagery something that

doesn't take place in the future. Something that took place 90 years before he writes. John is describing Christmas Eve. Like that's not like how I've heard Christmas Eve. You're right. It's not. What is going on there? No, Christmas Eve is a silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Like let's get the candle, right? No, imagine, I mean, we're always going to do that on Christmas Eve, but imagine if we just kind of went with Revelation 12 Christmas Eve.

Welcome to church. We've got dragons chasing babies on the stage and there's fire and like that's that's a wild Christmas. What is going on there? Well, in Revelation, symbols and imagery are the key to apocalyptic colors and numbers have symbolic significance. Colors and numbers have symbolic significance. We'll see throughout even in

chapter one we see this seven seven seven seven angels seven churches seven horns seven like seven. What's going on there. This is an image of wholeness completion perfection. It's not what John sees next but not what John not what happens next what John sees and hears next and it's often graphic in nature. Go back to our Christmas Eve story. Like why why can't John just be like hey.

What Luke said, know, all is calm, all is bright, there's no room in the end. Like that's a sweet story. Let's just sit in the sweet story. What's with the graphic imagery? Well, because graphic imagery hits us on a different level emotionally in our imagination and it communicates some things that simply telling the story and narrative prose do not communicate. Let me see if I can help illustrate this.

So this summer we were in Paris again and we got to go to the best art museum in the world. It was our fourth time, the Louvre. If you've ever been to Louvre, if you've gone the first time, you'll do what most people do. There are 35,000 masterpieces of art on display. Did you know there are another 550,000 in storage that you just never see? This is wild, right?

But when you go to Luluv, it's just massive and you feel this pressure and the crowds, you feel this pressure. I got to see it all. I got to see all the most popular ones. I got to see, you know, the Mona Lisa, which is like the Kardashians of the art world. I don't know why it's famous. It's famous because it's famous. That's why. But you go through and you see, you check the box. I saw that. saw that you get about a tenth of a second for each piece. that's awesome. That's awesome. You get through it done and you're like, whoo. Yeah, I've been to Luluv. I got it. Well, this time.

having gone a few times, I'm like, I'm not gonna do that.

I had read this book, Rembrandt is in the Wind about Christian and art and all this stuff. I said, there's four paintings that I want to look at. That's my whole priority this time. I want to just go sit in front of these paintings. And we would find them and we'd sit before them and something different happens. It was the best experience I've ever had at an art museum where you just sit before it. You're like, whoa. You start to notice details. You start to see.

things that you didn't see before, it starts to speak to you in ways that only the image can speak to you. And after you sit there for a while, I take out my phone, I take a picture and I asked you at GBT, I'm like, what else should I know about this? And it's like, look here, look here. Okay, well, what was going on? Why did they write it? Like, why did he paint it like this? What was this? Like, and you just, you start to take in the image and you're like, it comes alive. So that if I were to describe any images to you, it would just.

do a disservice because it's meant to be seen. The same is true in apocalyptic imagery. Let's go back to Revelation 12 and the Christmas Eve that something different happens to you when you're like, no, there is a cosmic battle. There's a dragon about to eat the baby, but God is sovereign and he's controlling, he's fighting our battles.

for us and you're like, well, there's a dragon that wants to take us out. There's a dragon that hates our families and our marriages and our church and hates the advance of the gospel. And we're in the middle of a battle that stirs you on a level that silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright doesn't stir you. we need both. But now you start to see symbols and imagery. Here's a quote by one of the books that we've been working through to get ready for the series, Daryl Johnson.

writes this, says, has the power to hook us deep inside. Images can quickly and effectively convey that which we struggle to put into words. Imagery goes beyond the intellect and through the emotions into the imagination, grabbing hold of us at the deepest recesses of our being. It's cool. And the imagery that gets painted for us is

the language of the Old Testament. Again, in the 402 verses, there's over 500 references to or allusions to the Old Testament. Now, why did he do that? Again, he's a religious exile on Patmos and he desperately wants to get a message of hope and encouragement and perseverance to the churches he loves. He can't just come out and say, Jesus is Lord, Caesar doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's got to speak in a language that the churches will understand, but that the censors of Rome will not understand. Enter the Old Testament. They would get this and be like, man, this is the ramblings of a crazy man. Maybe that's how you've read Revelation before. But as the church receives it, they're like, I know what he's talking about. He's referencing Exodus in.

and God's deliverance of the people then and he's pointing to Jesus as the fulfillment of the Exodus and so on and so forth. is the imagery that he draws from. Revelation is a call to hope filled perseverance. It's the only book of the Bible that starts and ends with a blessing for those that engage it. Verse three blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this. So the reader of it. The words of this prophecy.

And blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is near. There's a blessing to this. And so as such, I want to encourage you, I want to challenge you this week as you engage this, begin to engage this word to receive the blessing. So read the whole book this week. If possible in one setting, if possible, read it out loud. That's what it says. Blessed is the one who reads aloud and those who hear.

back in the first century, most people couldn't read aloud, but we can. So read it aloud, go through it, ask some questions of the book as you go through it. What is this teaching me about King Jesus? This is ultimately about Jesus on his throne, that there's more going on than meets the eye. What is it teaching me? Number two, what's confusing or what do I not understand here? And if you're like most of us,

You'll have a lot of question marks. A lot of it will be confusing. Again, it's hard for us, but it's still good for us to have these questions. And in this series, hopefully we'll answer some of those questions. I promise you we won't answer all the questions. Sorry to disappoint, but at least you'll recognize, hey, what's confusing here? Number three, what does it look like for me to obey this word? Remember the third blessing, blessed are those who do it.

who put it to practice in their lives. Normally when we read the book of Revelation, or at least me, I'm just kind of an observer, like, whoa, this is all bizarre. But it actually is calling us to something as a church. It's calling us to faithfulness, to perseverance, to understand that more is going on than meets the eye. So we've got some resources for you through this series. We've got some scripture journals in the back. If you are a note taker, this is just...

The book of Revelation. You can see I took my notes for my sermon here as I was working through it. You can grab one of those. If you're not a note taker, don't grab a book. We don't have one for everybody. But if you are, feel free to take one. We have a webpage full of resources that we, can we go on to the next place, the resource page. We've got a webpage that lists our different resources that you can get if you want to go deeper on any of this.

And then finally, if you have any questions, can scan the bulletin QR code or email us at revelation at redemption Parker. And we'll try to answer some of the questions. We're going to try to do a, like a 10 minute podcast each week answering some of these questions. Okay. Let me land the plane here. Even in revelation chapter one, we get what we need most. Look at verse eight says this, I am the alpha.

and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty down in verse 12. says then I turned to see the voice of that was was speaking to me and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man. This is a reference to Daniel clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.

The hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand, he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was full, what was like the sun shining in full strength.

I say Revelation gives us what we need most because no matter who you are today, no matter what you face, no matter what your past is, no matter what your future is, what you and I need most is a big vision of our big God. We need to see Jesus as who he is because most of the time what we see big in our life is our own struggles, our own temptations, our own

problems. These seem to loom large in our eyes. But if we could lift our eyes beyond that and we could see the Jesus who stands among us, even right now with fire in his eyes and a sword from his mouth and his face shining like the sun, when we see the glory and the majesty, the sovereignty, the providence of King Jesus who is with us and for us and fighting with us and for us right now, man, everything else gets put into proper perspective.

It's what you need most. It's what revelation is going to give us. And when we see this God as who He is and what He's doing for us, then with the apostle Paul, for example, in Romans, when he says, if this God is for us, then who can be against us? That is our God. Amen. Amen. Let me pray for us as we prepare to leave here.