All right, good morning everyone.
It's good to be with you here this morning. I think last time
that Bryn and I were here, everyone was sitting up towards the front
and we all had our coats on because it's the dead of winter and the
front door was just hanging wide open for who knows how long,
so. The environment is a little bit better this morning than
the last time, so. It's good to see all of you.
Happy Father's Day. I'll just mention a word on that.
I don't think that it's unspiritual to mention Father's Day or Mother's
Day or whatever holiday that it is. Just, I was thinking this morning
how Yeah, just how important fathers
are in God's design for the family. And just from my own experience
and the experience of others around me and even experiences
of the middle schoolers that I teach and serve with at church,
the calling of a father is incredibly important. And so I think that
Father's Day is a good day to think about the dignity of that
calling. Fathers operate best according
to God's design when they love Jesus Christ and they are committed
to serving Jesus Christ. and they're exemplifying the
self-sacrificial love of Jesus to their wife and to their family. And so Father's Day is a good
day for fathers, fellow fathers out there to think about the
dignity of your calling and to recommit yourself to showing
the self-sacrificial love of Christ to your family. And what
a noble thing that that is. It's a good day to wish your
fathers Happy Father's Day and to thank them for what they do.
And along with any holidays, frankly, there are joys in holidays
and there are sorrows in holidays. Just personally speaking, like
with my family, like I know that Uncle Eric, this is the first
Father's Day without your father on this earth. And maybe that's
the case for some of you here as well for the first or second
or third anniversary of maybe a father passing away. And You know, I think that we can
ignore those things and try to forget about them, or we can
take those feelings of sorrow and bring them and put them at
the Lord's feet and put them at His feet and receive the consolation
and the comfort that He offers to all of us. So whether we're
rejoicing or whether we're sorrowing, we're thankful that Jesus teaches
us that God is our Heavenly Father, that He cares deeply for us,
that He loves us beyond all measure, that He provides for us, and
all of those amazing things. Just a meditation there, so Happy
Father's Day. What I've prepared this morning,
it's a message on the book of Revelation. We're preaching through
the book of Revelation in our church in Rock Rapids. And so
that's been on the mind That's what we've been thinking about.
And so I just wanted to Not like repreach any of those messages,
but just to give Kind of a general overview of the book of Revelation
and I would encourage you in the hope that like Revelation
is a book to be read I would encourage us all in the reading
of the book of Revelation in order to be encouraged by the
gospel and our Lord Jesus. And so I would love to give a
brief overview of that and give some insights into its message.
But first I'd like to make some introductory comments just about
the attitude surrounding the book of Revelation as a whole. But first, before I do that,
let's go ahead and flip open to Revelation, if you have your
Bible. Let's flip open to chapter 1. Don't worry, I'm not gonna
read the whole book. Let's just read some of chapter
1 together, starting in verse 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ
that God gave to him to show his servants what must soon take
place. He made it known by sending his
angel to his servant, John, who testified to the word of God
and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatever he saw. Blessed
is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed
are those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep what
is written in it, because the time is near. John, to the seven
churches in Asia, grace and peace to you from the one who is, who
was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before
his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn
from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To
him who loves us and has set us free 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. Amen. Why don't you go ahead and bow our
heads together in prayer with me. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we hear your words there from Revelation chapter one, and we
just we pray them back to you. We thank you for Jesus Christ,
the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. We confess him
to be risen from the dead, alive, seated on the throne at your
right hand. We confess that he's king of
the rulers of the earth, that he reigns. We confess that he loves us and
has shown his love for us by dying for us and taking our sins
upon himself. He has set us free by His blood
and He's made us a kingdom, priests to you, His God and Father. And it's through our prayers
and it's through that priesthood that He's made us that we offer
up our prayers to you. And we know that you accept them
and are pleased by them through Jesus Christ. So we give the
glory to you. Open our ears to the words of
your truth this morning and encourage our hearts. Amen. All right, so just to begin with
some comments surrounding the attitude around the book of Revelation. So generally speaking, I think
that there are probably three different attitudes that people
have regarding Revelation. And the first attitude is the
one that's too interested in the book of Revelation. This
is the attitude where it's like, yes, the guest preacher is going
into Revelation, woohoo. Now we're gonna get the good
stuff. And I'm afraid that I need to
burst that bubble. The gospel is the good stuff. Amen? The gospel is the good
stuff. And so, in any book of the Bible,
inasmuch as it bears witness to the gospel, which Revelation
definitely does, it is the good stuff. Certain interpretations
of Revelation, especially in the 20th century, have led to
endless speculation about the politics of nations and the timing
of the end of the world. In Revelation, it does shed light
on those areas, but not in the way that we may think and not
in the way that many people want it to. It's not meant to be a
National Treasure movie or a Da Vinci Code movie. It's, as verse
one told us, the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's meant to encourage
us through seeing his power to judge, his power to save, his
power to steer history towards its appointed end. which is the
salvation of the people of God and the restoration of the earth. And so a responsible reading
of Revelation focuses on those truths rather than a reading
that has the Bible in one hand and the latest headlines from
the Middle East in the other hand. The second attitude toward Revelation
is the opposite of the first. This is the attitude that's absolutely
repulsed by the very existence of this book because it's just
seen and experienced a lot of the wackiness that's resulted
from the popularity of certain interpretations. This attitude
has been jaded, made hard, by the various movies, book series,
politicking, and doomsday bunkering that the popular views of Revelation
have spurred on. And if this is your attitude
toward Revelation, I would encourage you not to just swing out of
one ditch and into the other ditch. because we don't want
to neglect any book of the Bible that God has given to us. We
want to access them all and see how they point us to Jesus. The third attitude is the one
that's willing to interact with revelation, but it's apprehensive
because it's simply hard to understand. And let's be clear, Revelation
is one of the books in the Bible that is hardest to understand. We know that the gospel is easy
to understand. It's so easy to understand that
even kids can understand the gospel. And so by extension,
we might assume that the Bible is equally easy to understand. And frankly, I personally don't
think that that's true. And here's what I mean by that.
In my opinion, there are some parts of the Bible that are much
harder to understand than others. And there are multiple factors
that go into that. One of them is that we're so
far removed from the time that the Bible was written. And most
of it was written more than 2,000 years ago. And because of this,
the cultures that the books of the Bible were written in are
much different than our own culture that we live in now. Just to point that out, I'd ask
the question to you, how many of you have a railing, a safety
railing that runs all the way around the roof of your house? Probably none of us have a safety
railing on the roof of our house, and that's because in our culture,
that's simply not the way that our houses are built. But back
in the Israeli culture, their homes were built in a way where,
you know, if you were having some type of party or company
or something, there's a good chance that you were with a group
of people on your roof. And so, it's actually something
that's written in God's law in Deuteronomy to have a safety
railing around the roof of your home. There are also factors that are
specific to the literature of the Bible. The Bible contains
books from different genres. And so there are narratives in
the Bible. There are poetry, books of poetry
in the Bible, which, you know, we're kind of familiar with poetry,
but at the same time, it's not like our society is reading Shakespeare
anymore. So that one might be kind of
iffy for us. And then we have a genre called apocalypse, which
is what the book of Revelation is. Apocalyptic is a genre that
we're unfamiliar with. It's not something that we use
today. Apocalypse was a genre used at
the time in surrounding cultures, and so the readers of the Book
of Revelation would have understood a lot of what is being said. But apocalyptic literature uses
a lot of symbolic imagery in order to describe current world
events and political struggles. Often this would include things
like giant monsters and symbolic numbers and cataclysmic natural
disasters. Let's take the book of Daniel,
for example, if we're familiar with the book of Daniel. So there's
a portion of Daniel that is apocalyptic. If you remember the beasts that
were in one of the visions in the book of Daniel, you had four
beasts and they were looking like a leopard and a bear and
a lion and a human being. And they had multiple heads and
multiple horns and crowns and all of those type of things.
Well, that would be an apocalyptic vision, symbolizing real realities. And so that's what the book of
Revelation is as well. And so because of all of those
factors, it would be irresponsible for us to interpret each book
of the Bible in exactly the same way. If we were to read Revelation
in the exact same way as like the gospel of Matthew, for example. But we know that the common thread
that runs through every book of the Bible is that they all
bear witness to Jesus. All of the books in the Old Testament,
they look forward to Jesus. And all of the books in the New
Testament, they look backward to Jesus and they expound and
explain Jesus. And so in order to help us see
that, I want to take the rest of our time and present six themes
as Revelation presents them. And I'm hoping that these themes,
they serve as good kind of handholds to grasp onto as you read the
book of Revelation. So you can grab onto them and
you can see how Revelation points to Jesus. And so the first theme is the
state of the world according to the book of Revelation. So while Revelation uses all
sorts of over-the-top symbolic imagery to paint the state of
the world for us, they picture something that's really real.
And this is one of the greatest treasures that this book specifically
has to offer us. Perspective. Perspective. What is real? What is really
going on in this world? When we pray for wisdom, we're
praying that God would give us perspective. so that we can act
accordingly to what is real and what is true. Now, I would argue that the perspective
of some people is too optimistic. And let me explain that. Optimistic
in the sense that Jesus has come, he's done his work and defeated
our enemies, and now things are going to be smooth sailing from
here on out for God's people. God's people are going to gain
influence over the government, over the schools, over the corporations. And the world is going to keep
getting better and better and better until finally Jesus comes
back. Some teach it like the church
is preparing a place for Jesus. But Jesus teaches us that he
is preparing a place for us. He's preparing a place for us. But on the flip side, I think
that we can have a perspective that is too pessimistic as well. You know, the type of perspective
that says, you know, this world is just, it's going to hell in
a handbasket. You know, the wicked have us
surrounded on all sides. There's no hope for them. There's
no hope for us. There's nothing good happening
in this world. Or even that creation itself
is evil. And as the red alert siren is
going off and the fires are burning in the streets, the people of
God just need to bunker down, take shelter, and just wait for
Jesus to zap us out of here and burn everything to the ground. Well, first of all, creation
is not evil inherently. Creation is not evil, creation
is under a curse. That's an important distinction
there. When we think about the big story
that God is telling, we tend to think of it as starting with
the fall instead of starting with creation. God is good and
for his glory he created everything and he said that it was good. Inherently, humanity is a good
thing and creation is a good thing in God's eyes according
to God's design. And it's only after humanity
rebelled against God did death enter the world and everyone
started to be born as a sinner and God put a curse on the world. But if we start at the fall and
we don't start at creation, we might look at the world and think
that the world itself is bad and human beings are bad in and
of themselves. And I think that that's not a
healthy way to view people and a healthy way to view the world.
We view people certainly as sinful and lost and fallen and we view
the world as cursed and we are truly hopeless apart from Jesus
Christ and the gospel. And Jesus, he is saving us and he is going
to restore the world. He's going to defeat evil and
do away with the curse. Romans 8 tells us that creation
has been subjected to futility and that it's groaning and that
it's waiting for a time when it's released from its bondage
to decay and turned over to the children of God. And so the destiny
of creation is a glorious destiny. And there are good things happening
in this world. Jesus is on the throne, and the
Spirit of God is alive and active in the world, and the gospel
is going out, and Jesus is saving people, and people are entering
into the kingdom. And so in that way, there is
hope and life and peace to be had in Jesus here and now. So that's a pessimistic and optimistic
way to kind of view the state of the world. And I think that
Revelation avoids both of these two ditches and gives us a balanced
perspective. The state of the world is this. There is a battle being fought,
but the war has been won. We're still in the midst of the
hardships of the war, but at the same time, we can taste the
joy and the hope and the peace that victory brings. Now let's talk a little bit more
about this war. The war is between the kingdom
of darkness and the kingdom of God. Satan is the primary antagonist,
the chief rebel, along with all of his demons. He has deceived
humanity into joining in his rebellion, and we are guilty
of joining him. Blinded by our sin, we're guilty
of willingly aligning ourselves with the devil and promoting
the kingdom of darkness. Satan's campaign is to oppose
God's will at every step of the way, at every turn. And his tactics
are to steal and kill and destroy and deceive. Satan's primary strategy was
to go after the key player in God's army, his son Jesus Christ,
the captain of our salvation. And Revelation 12 pictures it
in this way. If you wanna go ahead and flip
to Revelation 12. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet, and a crown of 12 stars on her
head. She was pregnant and cried out
in labor and agony as she was about to give birth. Then another
sign appeared in heaven. There was a great fiery red dragon
having seven heads and 10 horns and on its heads were seven crowns. Its tail swept away a third of
the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. And the dragon
stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that
when she did give birth, it might devour her child. And so Revelation pictures Satan's
opposition as this way, he's this great fiery red dragon and
he's kneeling at the feet of the woman. which might stand
for Israel or the people of God, but certainly the baby that's
about to be born is Jesus himself. And he's waiting to devour Jesus. Now we know that Satan's influence
was instrumental in the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus. And
Satan, frankly, probably thought that he'd won when Jesus died
on the cross. But little did he know that the
Lord's victory wouldn't be won through political power or military
strength, but through an unimaginable act of self-sacrificial love. The death of the Son of God.
Jesus had transformed the wooden cross from being an instrument
of death into an instrument of life, redeeming his people from
the power of Satan by putting away the guilt of their rebellion
forever, by taking the punishment of their sins on himself. Jesus then rose to new life,
overcoming the power of death, and was enthroned at the right
hand of God to reign. Revelation 12 goes on to say
that the dragon was furious that he couldn't defeat Jesus. And so he stormed off and went
off to wage war against the rest of the woman's offspring, which
are the people of God. And so that's the part of the
battle that's currently being fought. Satan is raging right
now, certainly, but raging in defeat. And while he does what
he still can to try to frustrate God's plan, Jesus is reigning
over this world through the power of the Holy Spirit. And he is
setting people free from their chains and turning them from
rebels into citizens of his kingdom. And so that's the realistic view
of the state of the world right now. That's what is happening
right now. And certainly not all things
are easy for the people of God. They're not all easy for the
church, are they? At the beginning of Revelation
to the letters to the seven churches, we see believers in the churches
who are being persecuted politically, economically, religiously, some
of them even to the point of martyrdom, of being killed for
their faithfulness. In Revelation, we see believers
being persecuted through Satan's use of the religions of this
world and the political powers of this world. And yet, God's
kingdom grows in the midst of persecution. The Bible tells
us that God's kingdom is an unshakable kingdom. It's unstoppable, it
can't be stopped. His kingdom will come and his
will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now theme number two, God's sovereignty
according to Revelation. When we have the news turned
on or our eyes in front of the newspaper, it can be easy to
see all of the wild and crazy things that are happening in
this world and just think, where is all of this going? Where's
all of this going? Have things gotten out of control? I took some of the middle schoolers
in my church fishing last week. And one of them reeled in this
really big bluegill. And he reeled it in, and he grabbed
it, and he took it off the hook. And he was holding it. He wasn't
holding it by its mouth, but he was holding it by the fin
of its tail, which is not a good idea. And he had control of it
for a few seconds, but then when that fish started to flail around,
it flung itself out of his grip and started flopping all over
the ground and he had to kick it back into the water to let
it go. But like the boy in that fish,
you know, did God have control of history for a little while? And then when everything started
to flail around, did it fling itself out of God's hand to flop
around? Well, certainly Satan has been flailing
hard against God's control. Humanity flails hard trying to
flop out of God's grip. Psalm 2 describes this when David
writes, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their
stand against the, take their stand and the rulers conspire
together against the Lord and against his anointed one. And
they say, let's tear off their chains and throw them off of
us. People are flailing hard trying
to get out of God's hand. And we see this opposition all
throughout the book of Revelation. With the seven trumpet judgments
in chapters 8 and 9, God is pouring out his judgment onto the wicked
in the form of plagues. kind of like Exodus, where he's
putting plagues on Egypt to set his people free. And in the midst of these plagues,
the people, they continue to resist, and they harden their
hearts, and they do not repent. Chapter 9 verse 20 says, the
rest of the people who were not killed by the plagues did not
repent of the works of their hands to stop worshiping demons
and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot
see, hear, or walk. And they did not repent of their
murders, their sorceries, their sexual immorality, or their thefts. So we see the opposition of the
wicked. We see the opposition of Satan.
Revelation shows these satanic beasts that are uttering blasphemies
against God and killing God's faithful witnesses. And in chapter 20, we see Satan
going out to the nations and gathering an army together to
wage one final battle against God and against his anointed. So Revelation pictures just the
reality of this world's opposition to God. But do you know what
God's response to that opposition is? Psalm 2 continues on, the one
enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord ridicules them. He laughs. God's able to respond like this
because he knows that he can't be bested. He's the most high
God. He's sovereign, and history is
His. It's in His hand. He's steering
history at full speed ahead to its intended end. It's going according to His plan. And what does God's plan involve? Let's finish reading Psalm 2.
And then he speaks to them in his anger and terrifies them
in his wrath. I have installed my king on Zion,
my holy mountain. I will declare the Lord's decree.
He said to me, you are my son. Today I have become your father. Ask of me and I'll make the nations
your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession.
You'll break them with an iron scepter. You'll shatter them
like pottery. And so now, kings, be wise. Receive instruction, you judges
of the earth. Serve the Lord with reverential
awe and rejoice with trembling. Pay respect to the son or he
will be angry and you will perish in your rebellion, for his anger
may ignite at any moment. All who take refuge in him are
blessed. So Psalm 2, it really goes along
well with Revelation. It paints humanity's opposition to God,
but it paints God's plan. I have installed my king, my
anointed one on Zion, my holy mountain. You know when that
happened? That happened A little over 2,000
years ago, when Jesus ascended into heaven and sat down at the
right hand of God, he was designated to be the Son of God in power,
as Romans 1.4 says. And so God's plan is to present
his son with an inheritance that's worthy of him. And that is being
done through the defeat of evil and the judgment of sin, the
redemption of a people, and the restoration of creation. That
inheritance will be a kingdom made up of a pure and spotless
people. that live under Jesus's rule
in a pure and spotless place. Right, it's everything that God
had created at the beginning and more underneath the rule
of Jesus. And so that's God's sovereignty
according to Revelation. And now number three, worship
according to Revelation. Revelation is a book that deeply
informs the worship of the people of God. Revelation peels back
the curtain and gives us a glimpse of the heavenly worship that
is happening right now in the spiritual realm. In chapter four,
John is shown a vision of the throne room of God, who is depicted
as a radiant and crystal-like being who sits on the throne. God is surrounded by 24 elders
who worship him. And there are four angels, and
they are flying around the throne, and what are they singing? Holy,
holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. The elders prostrate themselves,
they bow down before the throne and they throw their crowns at
God's feet saying, our Lord and God, you are worthy to receive
glory and honor and power because you've created all things and
by your will they exist and were created. What an amazing picture of worship. Does our attitude in worship
align with the constant singing of the angels? Does it share
in that humble posture of people kneeling at the throne of a king? Does it reflect their willingness
to throw off their own crowns in respect to the king who's
truly worthy to reign? I know that one of my favorite
parts of worship gatherings on Sunday morning is the singing
together. I love the moments where I can
hear the voices of the saints all lifted up to God together
in praise. And just in kind of a poetic
way, in those moments, it almost seems like the veil is a little
bit thinner than what it usually is, right? When we're singing
together in praise to God. Now also in regard to worship,
Revelation shows us that worship of God is centered on Jesus Christ,
his son. It pleases God that he has made
the focus of our worship to be his son, Jesus. That's the way
that God wants it to be. The Bible tells us that Jesus
is the mediator between God and men. He's God's son, the anointed
one, chosen to sit on the heavenly throne with all authority and
all power. And it makes sense that God wants
us to worship him through the worship of his son. We hear,
worthy is the lamb who is slaughtered to receive power and riches and
wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. Revelation
5.12. The images that Revelation uses
to depict Jesus are glorious and majestic images. A far cry from the pulverized
and pitiable man who hung on the cross. Jesus is shown as
a bright and shining figure with eyes that are aflame like fire
and a sword that comes out of his mouth. And he rides on a
white horse and is called faithful and true. All of these images, they depict
a Jesus who is strong, powerful, majestic, worthy of our worship
and our praise. Now theme number four, discipleship
according to Revelation. discipleship, it's simply following
Jesus as believers. It's living the Christian life
underneath the authority and the power of Jesus. In Revelation, it steers its
readers toward A life of other dependence on Jesus and total
trust in Jesus because he's completely trustworthy and totally faithful. There's not a single person that
you know in this world that is totally trustworthy and completely
faithful. The best person that we know
will let us down at some point or another. As fathers did, the best father
will let you down at some point. The best pastor will let you
down and disappoint you in one way or another. But Jesus is
totally faithful and true and he will never disappoint you
or let you down. Revelation is like the ultimate
affirmation that Jesus is who he said that he was. He put his
money where his mouth was when he claimed to be the Son of God,
the Messiah. He's the firstborn from the dead. Who else has risen from the dead
according to his own power, the power of God? Nobody else. Revelation tells us that he's
the faithful witness The first and the last, the one
who was dead but now lives forever. He's the rider who is called
faithful and true. He really did defeat Satan at
the cross and sin and death. And he really will come back
to finish the job. Right, what Jesus says that he's
going to do, he does. He is faithful, he's true. And
so, Revelation encourages us as believers towards the end
of throwing ourselves at Jesus' feet in complete dependence,
total trust of Jesus. And of course, we don't do that
perfectly, do we? There's not a single day that
goes by where I can say that I totally trust in Jesus. where I've made it from waking
up to going to bed, and I've made it through this day, and
I was totally dependent on Jesus all day. That's not the way that
it is. We fight a war against our flesh. We're not done with this flesh
in this lifetime. Our flesh steers us to want to
trust in ourselves. to trust in our own power to
do the things that only Jesus can do for us. It's a battle, isn't it? And
thankfully, you know, We're encouraged to trust in Jesus, but we do
so by his presence with us and in us. And we do it by his grace. And we know that we can't do
it perfectly. And we live in the power of his
forgiveness and in his grace. And it's certainly not by our
obedience that we'll stand before him when he comes back and he
looks at us and says, well done. It's not by our perfect obedience. It's not by our perfect trust.
It's by His obedience and by His perfect trust in the Father
on our behalf. That certainly doesn't mean that
we don't try to grow in our trust of Jesus and in our faithfulness,
but we don't put the cart before the horse. We don't put our obedience
ahead of the new identity that Jesus gives to us. Our faithfulness, our obedience,
it flows out of the new identity that Jesus gives us. You're a
child of God, perfect and holy in the eyes of the Lord. And so that being said, I would
encourage us also that Revelation is deeply concerned with its
hearer's faithfulness to Jesus. So when we look at the letters
to the seven churches at the beginning of Revelation, Jesus
is encouraging them to hold fast, to hold tight to Him, and to
remain faithful through persecution. Jesus doesn't expect them to
do this on their own power. He expects them to do it according
to his presence and his power. And he motivates them by some
amazing promises. I'm just gonna quickly blow through
these promises that Jesus makes to the churches, starting in
chapter two. To the church in Ephesus, to the one who conquers,
I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which
is in the paradise of God. Then to Smyrna, to the one who
conquers, you will never be harmed by the second death. To Pergamum,
to the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna.
I will also give him a white stone, and on the stone a new
name is inscribed that no one knows except the one who receives
it. To Thyatira, The one who conquers and who keeps my works
to the end, I will give him authority over the nations, and he will
rule them with an iron scepter. He will shatter them like pottery.
Just as I have received this from my father, and I will also
give him the morning star. Chapter three, to the letter
in Sardis, or to the church in Sardis, To the one who conquers,
you'll be dressed in white clothes and I will never erase his name
from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my
father and before his angels. To Philadelphia, the one who
conquers, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God and he
will never go out again. I will write on him the name
of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem,
which comes down out of heaven from my God and my new name. Lastly, to Laodicea, to the one
who conquers, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne,
just as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his
throne. Now those promises, they were
made mostly to believers who were experiencing persecution
and who were being pressured to, you know, give way to maybe
the government or give way to the Jews who were trying to get
them to go back to the Mosaic law. But either way, they were
being persecuted and they were being pressured to compromise
their faith. To go against the simple confession
that Jesus is Lord. Right, to maybe say Caesar is
Lord or someone else is Lord. What does this mean for us? Well, all of those promises We
hear them, and they're all addressed to those who conquer. And from the rest of the Bible,
we know that we don't conquer in and of ourselves, but it's
through being united to Jesus by faith that we conquer, because
He is the one who conquered the world. And so we don't set off to try
to earn these promises, but we are found in Jesus, and we hold
fast to Jesus, and that is how we conquer in this world. That's
how we remain faithful against the pressures of this world. And so that's what Revelation
has to say about discipleship to Jesus. And now lastly, the end according
to the book of Revelation. The end. So again, going back to certain
interpretations of Revelation that really push us to try to
figure out all of the details. of how everything is gonna go
down at the end and to have our eyes on the newspapers and the
headlines on our favorite news websites and those types of things.
Trying to figure out when it's going to happen and all these
different things. I don't think that revelation
teaches us or wants us to do that. I don't think that's the
reason that it's written. Revelation tells us about the
end. It tells us what we need to know.
It tells us that in the future there will be judgment. There will be judgment. When Jesus comes back on the
day that God has chosen, Jesus is going to judge the world and
everybody. Everybody will stand before Him
and give an account for the things that they've done in this life. This truth doesn't get preached
very often nowadays. And I know that that's part of
the reason why you guys come to this church, is that the pulpit
at this church doesn't shy away from the truth that Jesus will
bring judgment to this world. Revelation tells us that evil
will be defeated. and that God's enemies will find
their place to be what's depicted as the lake of fire. We're told that the devil will
find his place in the lake of fire, that Jesus will throw him
in, chapter 20, verse 10. The devil who deceived them was
thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and
the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day
and night forever and ever. Now, that's a comforting truth. in
the sense that, plainly speaking, that we humans
are fully guilty of our sin. There's absolutely no way that
we can blame shift and throw all of our guilt onto Satan. We will answer for the things
that we've done, but it is the biblical truth that Satan is
antagonistic towards God and he is the one who deceived humanity
and tempted humanity towards rebellion against God. And Satan
will answer for what he's done. And Satan will be punished day
and night forever and ever. All of the deception that he's
brought into the world, he'll answer for it. All of the ways
that he has stolen and killed and destroyed, he'll answer for
it. He will not get off scot-free
when Jesus comes back. Not only will Satan be punished
in the lake of fire forever and ever, but the wicked will be
tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation tells us
that those who fail to repent will find their share in the
lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
That's chapter 21, verse eight. And so all of the wickedness
and all of the rebellion that's ever been done in this life will
be made right. It will be punished. God is a God of justice. He loves justice. And according
to his character, he will let no crime be swept under the rug,
but every crime will be punished, whether it was Jesus who paid
for it or whether it's the person who will pay for it. We can find comfort in this truth
because we have all been sinned against and we've all experienced
the pain that sin has brought into this
world. We've all experienced the consequences that sin has
brought into this world. If you've experienced death in
any way, you've experienced the consequences of sin. If you've
experienced something being stolen from you or something being said
about you, or any type of thing like that,
you've experienced the consequences of sin. And we can find comfort in the
fact that all of those things, they will be met with justice,
true justice will be done at the end by Jesus. Now, that picture might seem bleak, but Revelation,
on the other hand, paints the amazing truth that is the future
of the people of God. And I can't think of really one
book of the Bible or even one section of the Bible that has
brought more comfort in terms of thinking about the future
than chapter 21 of the book of Revelation. So I'm just going to go ahead
and read a little bit of it here, starting in verse one. It says,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and
the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also
saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. Then I heard
a loud voice from the throne. Look, God's dwelling is with
humanity and he will live with them. They will be his people
and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He
will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no
more. Grief, crying and pain will be
no more because the previous things have passed away. Then
the one seated on the throne said, look, I'm making everything
new. He also said, write, because
these words are faithful and true. And so more than any other
book, Revelation gives us a glimpse into the glorious future, the
glorious inheritance of the people of God. Jesus, He will come back on that
appointed day, and those who aren't found in Him will be ushered
away to eternal judgment, eternal separation from Him. But those
who are found in Him, His people, they'll be told, well done. and they will be ushered into
a world that's completely been purged, it's completely been
freed from sin. Everything that's been affected
by sin in this world will be remade. The curse will be lifted. Everything that's cursed about
this world will be no more. Our bodies will be raised to
newness of life. That means that if we pass away,
or our fellow saints who have already passed away, they're
in the presence of Jesus right now, at this moment, experiencing
the blessedness that comes from being with him. But they are
looking forward to the resurrection of their bodies. Jesus will resurrect all of our
bodies, and our souls will meet our bodies, and we'll live in
this world that's completely perfect. Think about over the last year, over the
last year, Rock Valley and surrounding communities have gone through
a flood that has, you know, sent people to move away from this
town. It's uprooted families. It's destroyed lifelong homes. It's destroyed memories. That's a cursed thing. That's something that happened
because this world is cursed. And that type of thing won't
happen in the new heaven and new earth. If you've experienced death, I've never experienced more death
in my life than over the course of the last year and a half. And God's going to make that
right. He's going to make that right. It won't be there. He'll wipe away our tears. No
more death. Grief, crying, and pain will
be no more. Those things will have passed
away. Everything in this life that
we experience that's good and beautiful and true, because we
do see those things in this life. They're amazing gifts from God
by His grace. We'll experience those things
to their fullness. in the new heaven and new earth. A world full of goodness and
beauty and truth. And, maybe you've heard this
thought, I've heard this thought, I don't remember where it's from,
but it's the idea that if you're looking forward to a heaven but
Jesus isn't there, then you're not really looking forward to
heaven. Because our savior will be there. We'll be in His presence. We'll get to see His face. We'll get to see Him for all
that He is. We'll be reunited with the saints
who've gone before us. I can't think of anything more
blessed than just sitting for some time reflecting on these
truths that Revelation 21 shows us. And I would just leave you
with that thought that I don't think that I don't think that
there's been any passages in the Bible that have fueled my
prayer life more than passages from the book of Revelation.
You know, right at the front, we read it already in Revelation
chapter one, reflecting on Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the
earth, to him who loves us and has set us free by his blood
and made us a kingdom and priests to his God and father, to him
be glory and dominion forever. What an amazing thing for us
to pray. That prayer, that song that the
angels are singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was and is to come. What an amazing thing to
pray over and over and over again. And of course, the end that Revelation
points us to, the glorious home and the glorious company of the
people of God in the presence of Jesus. So I would urge you
to read Revelation, to spend time in Revelation. Don't be
scared of Revelation, but take those handholds Look for the
simple truths. Look for the ways that you're
pointed to Jesus and the blessedness that we have in Him and read
it for profit. So let's go ahead and let's bow
our heads together in prayer and then we'll welcome Eric back
up and we'll end with singing. Heavenly Father, God, we, just
like I just said, we echo those prayers, the essence of those
prayers back to you. God, we have a glorious future
ahead of us, a future that's been bought and prepared by Jesus. He's preparing a place for us. God, we look forward to the day
where We'll see you face to face where we'll be reunited with
those who've gone before us, where we'll live in a perfect
place that's free from curse and free of sin, where righteousness
dwells, where you are our God and you
live in our midst. God, it reminds me of the Garden
of Eden when you walked in its midst and you walked with man. You talked with man. You had a relationship of peace
with man. That is our future and it's made
even better because Jesus has died and risen. So we give you all glory and
honor and praise. We worship you through your son. We give him honor and glory and
praise and may he have power and may he have dominion forever
and ever, amen.