Turn with me to Revelation 19. Revelation 19. I'm going to read
verses 1-13. We're going to look at one verse
and one phrase that caught me off guard, swept me off my feet, gave me excitement, Let's begin reading in Revelation
19, verse 1. And after these things, I heard
a great voice of much people in heaven saying, Hallelujah,
salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God. For true and righteous are His
judgments. For He hath judged the great
whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication and hath
avenged the blood of His servants at her hand. And again they said,
Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever
and ever. And the four and twenty elders
and four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the
throne, saying, Amen, Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne,
saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear
him, both small and great. And I heard, as it were, the
voice of great multitude, and as the voice of many waters,
the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord
God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice and
give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his
wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine
linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me,
Write, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage
supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are
true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship
him. And he said unto me, See thou
do it not, I am thy fellow servant. And of my brethren that were
the testimony of Jesus, worship God. For the testimony of Jesus
is the spirit of prophecy. And I saw heaven open, and behold,
a white horse. He that sat upon him was called
Faithful and True. And in righteousness he does
judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire,
and on his head were many crowns. And he had a name written that
no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture
dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. Wow! Just reading that. Stopping
there. In these first 13 verses, we
notice glorious and vibrant names or phrases given unto our Sovereign
Redeemer. Salvation, glory, honor, power. True and righteous. The Lord
Omnipotent reigneth. He's called faithful and true.
He's called the Word of God. But I want to single out one
phrase, one description given to our Master and to no one else. And that is found in verse 12.
Look with me. And on His head were many crowns. Many crowns. That's not said
anywhere else about anyone other than our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. many crowns. This description,
this phrase, or this quality, united with His character, is
both fascinating and wonderful to His people. I believe in this
phrase we discern both Christ's person and His accomplishments. In this phrase, on His head were
many crowns. Now I didn't tell Nathan, I don't
want you to tell him what song, and I didn't tell him, you know,
about the first hymn that we sang. He was a king. I just smiled. I said, well, we're going to
be discussing the king this morning who has many crowns. Many crowns. Well, let's take
a look here. Basically, I just got two points.
Who he is and what he's done. Many crowns is simply for who
he is. He's lord of lords and styled
king of kings in the scriptures. A king has a crown. But he has
many crowns. Many crowns. First of all, he
has the essential crown of his Godhead. That's who he is. He's God incarnate in the flesh.
And because he is, he has this essential crown of his Godhead.
simply for the fact of He's the Lord Jesus Christ, He's Emmanuel,
He's the Bauman Gilead, He's the true and faithful witness,
He's the Lord of lords, King of kings, numerous names. He's the mighty counselor, the
wonderful God, the everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. These
are all names, descriptions of our sovereign Lord Jesus Christ.
Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1. He has these crowns simply because
of who He is, His essential character, His essential qualities, His
attributes, we could say that as well, His attributes. Verse
1 in Hebrews chapter 1, God who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son, or directly
has spoken unto us by son. The language of God is son language,
son language. Whom he hath appointed heir of
all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness
of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding
all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty
on high. Being made so much better than
the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name
than they. What can be added to such a king
as this? He had this crown upon his brow
from all eternity. This crown has many other crowns. Or the word is actually, crowns
is many, which I'll go back and do the Greek. On his head were
abundant diadems or laurels. Laurels. You remember the Greek
games? They didn't have medals, but they had laurels. That was
given to the victor. That's what Christ has done.
But who He is, He came with crowns. He came with many crowns. diadems. He has many other crowns or diadems
as his attributes declare. His sovereignty. He's higher
than the heavens. His immutability. He's always
the same. That cannot be said about any
creature created. He has Immutability. That's one of His crowns. His
omnipresence. He's everywhere. We can't hide
from Him. We don't want to hide from Him.
Our sin nature, the old man, the flesh wants to hide, but
it cannot be done. He's everywhere. At all times. Every moment. His omniscience. He can't learn anything. He knows
everything. His creatorship. He spoke and
it was. His essential holiness and purity. These are all multiple crowns
that the Lord has because of His person. Let us celebrate
His coronation with loudest anthems of praise and adoration to the
all-sufficient, all-supreme, high monarch of everlasting glory. Christ said Himself, He's the
great I Am. He says in John 14, if you've
seen the Father, you've seen me. In John 10, 30, I and my
Father are one. He has essential glory. So because
of who He is, He has many crowns upon His royal head. Secondly,
He has many crowns because of what He has done. First, He has the crown of personal
mediation. He, by the sacrifice of His own
body, resolved for us God's dispute
against us. Turn to Hebrews chapter 9. God
had a dispute against us. So how is that dispute going
to be resolved? How is arbitration? That's His
mediatory office. That's another crown of what
He is and what He's done. How is our dispute with God? He has a dispute with us. But
then when He reveals Himself to us in the Gospel, He makes
us realize He has a dispute with us, and we have a dispute with
Him. We think our ways are correct,
but it's not. So, Hebrews 9, verses 14 and 15. How much more
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead
works to serve the living God? That deserves a crown. He's got
it. And for this cause, he is the
mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the
redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament,
they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."
We're born in sin, we're born hating God, and it's, well, I
don't hate God. Well, yes you do, you just don't
know it. But when God reveals His truth to you, His purity,
His holiness, His essential character, you're like, these mountains
and rocks hide me. And then you realize He's omnipresent
and there's nowhere I can go. If I go to the sea, He's there.
If I go to the heavens, He's there. He's everywhere. So, just
come clean. Confess your sins. Forsake them. Trust Christ. Follow Him in baptism. and continue among us. He has His crown as a personal
crown of mediation. Secondly, He has the crown of
the day of His marriage or a spousal to His bride. Turn to Psalms
3. I've never seen this. Of course,
I've never really thought about many crowns until the other day. Psalms of Solomon. Psalms of Solomon chapter 3 and
verse 11. Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion,
that's the church, and behold King Solomon, the Lord of glory,
with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day
of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart.
So there's that crown of his marriage espousal. Turn with
me, I missed a passage here, turn with me to Psalms 21. Going
back to God's essential, Christ's essential glory. I sure skipped
right over that one. That's because I had it in a
little baby print on the side of my notes. Psalms 21, verses
1 through 5. Psalms 21, verses 1 through 5. That's who we're talking about.
Shall joy in thy strength, O Lord, and in thy salvation, how greatly
shall he rejoice. Thou has given him his heart's
desire and has not withholding the request of his lips. For
thou preventest him with the blessings of goodness. Thou set
us a crown of pure gold on his head, the father and the son.
He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him even length of days
for ever and ever. His glory is great in thy salvation. Honor and majesty hast thou laid
upon him." So again, Christ, these crowns, these plural, is
because of who He is, and now we're looking at what He's done.
He's done, He has a crown of mediation, meditatorial. He has
a crown of His espousal. And when I thought about this
marriage, this marriage feast, this marriage between the groom
and the bride, the groom being Christ, holy, harmless, undefiled. The bride, vile in herself, we're
vile in ourselves, unlovely, destitute, and forsaken. But, because of our beloved,
because of the groom, She, or we, are as He is. She, or we, owns her
comeliness, says the Scriptures, all to the Son of Righteousness,
for in Him is her fruit found, in Him does her fruit grow, and
in Him is her fruit simply is. Do you have any fruit? I don't
have much fruit. If you're a believer, you do.
Hosea 14.8, that's in me is thy fruit found. In Christ we have
fruit. That's just some more, some 30,
60. But we crown Him. He's our husband. He has that crown. He also has
the crown of redemption. The just for the unjust. He has
the crown of righteousness imputed. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels. I can't... That's the fight that
we have. That's the difficult we have. I told somebody one time years
ago, I said, if the Lord ever saves you, you will understand
that the greatest enemy is self. You'll start fighting with things
you never bothered, that you never bothered you before. They'll
start bothering you. because you have Christ in you,
the hope of glory. So he has the crown of righteousness
imputed. He has the crown of particular discriminatory atonement,
which we make no apologies for. He died that we may live. He
has to die. We have to live. And that's the
atonement. So he has that crown. He has
the crown of full pardon and peace through the substitutionary
death of Emmanuel. We have peace through Him. He
substituted Himself for us. He has the crowning crown of
resurrection glory. Death, where is your sting? To
live is Christ, to die is gain. Why is that statement? To live is Christ, to die is
gain. Because He's the King and Lord over death. So if we live,
we live for Him. If we die, that's gain. Why? Because He has the crowns. He
has the crowns. And we're just passing from one
world to the next. And lastly, but not really, because
time wouldn't allow to exhaust these grand coronations of our
prophet, priest, and king, but I got to think about this, and
this is amazing. We, yes we, crown Him Lord of life, wantingly, willingly,
and with utmost humble reverence. We sing a song in hymn number
42, All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. Crown Him Lord of all. We do that. We do that willingly.
As a matter of fact, He says we throw our crowns, which we
have His righteousness, we have His comeliness, but it's like
we just throw them at His feet because that's where they belong.
And we sing in 477 at Calvary, we gladly own Him as our King.
We bow and throw our crowns at His feet. Revelations 4.10. This
crowning, we're not giving Him anything but what He deserves. But He needs nothing of us. But He rejoices that He sees
these crowns that He's given us, which in the Scriptures are
different places, we're just laying them at His feet. He's
the sovereign. He's essentially glory. He essentially
has many crowns because of who He is and what He's done. Just
crown after crown. And when you're reading the Scripture,
and the Lord shows you something about yourself and about Himself,
you just want to take another crown and here you go. The great collector of crowns.
And He's worthy. But this crowning by and from
us, it shows several things. It shows reverence. How do you
treat a king? How do you treat a master? How
do you treat your employer? How do you treat your boss? With
respect, this supersedes that. That's why the believer lives
by faith and in everything else around him. So is this going
to happen? Am I going to do this? Everything we do, it comes to
the Word of God. We take it to the Word of God
and say, is this for my benefit or not? Every single thing. Is this job, anything we do,
we take it to the Word of God. Is this going to be, how can
I honor God and glorify Him in this situation? Because we have
to live. We have to live, we pay taxes, we have to do things. But this takes the preeminence.
So this crowning from us shows reverence, it shows subservience. We bow, we acknowledge our place. And we're thankful that it's
that way. Thirdly, it shows adoration. I can't imagine, I can only think
in my mind's eye, when Christ came into Jerusalem on that donkey,
that colt, when it came into town, and they were saying, Hosannas,
and then the Pharisees got upset, tell your disciples to knock
it off. And He said, I could tell them
to knock it off, but if I told them the rocks and stones themselves
would hail me, would glorify me, because this is my coronation
unto the road to death for which I've come. I have a baptism to
be baptized with, and I must need to go through it. So if
the people aren't going to holler, these rocks, because I created,
I have the crown, see this crown? It's a crown of creatorship.
But they didn't understand it, they didn't know it. So it shows reverence, observance,
adoration, and joy. Joy. Finally. Philippians 3, finally brethren. Finally. Excellent message by
Henry. Finally. Everything is said and
done. You've surveyed your life. You're
maybe 70, 80 years old. You're looking back. You're surveying
your life. Things are coming to an end, coming to a close.
Finally, brethren, what are we to do? Rejoice. Rejoice. The Lord is King. And He's your King. And He has
many crowns. It shows joy. It shows worship. We gather together to worship
and adore and give praise unto Him who deserves it. Who deserves it. And it really,
I just love this thought, it gives peace. Everything's going
around, everything's going, you know, this country's trying to
usurp authority, Russia's trying to usurp authority over Ukraine,
and then the United Nations, and this and that, all these
different things, and you step, and you get, it gets crazy, but
you step back, and you just, the world's a mess, and we're
a mess, and this town's a mess, and this school's a mess, and
our jobs are a mess, and yes, yes, yes, but you step back,
And you look at Revelations and you see He's got many crowns. And it's never going to change.
And you just take a deep breath. Alright, I'm ready to go out
in the world. You know, bring on that student
that I just want to ring their name. The student that I'm trying
to teach but I can't get it. Or people, our children or ourselves
or our spouses or whatever won't listen or do whatever. He has many crowns. And it brings
peace. Like I said, and it's just a
favorite phrasing of mine, let the potchers, that means the
people of the world, who are nine to five clocking in and
trying to get ahead, let the scriptures, let the potchers
of the world strive for one another. And I've always said that, and
I said it to somebody the other day, I was talking to somebody
on the phone, And I've always said, when I was in religion,
I thought, well, I'll get in a church basketball league. And then as the Lord showed me
the truth, it's like, why does the church even have a basketball?
No. That's what I told them. I said,
there's parks and recreations for all that stuff. It does not
need to be brought in here. And so when we come here, what
we have for the children, the gospel. What do we have for the
middle-aged people? The gospel. What do we have for
the hoary-headed sinner? The gospel. And the gospel is,
the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. And that'll bring you peace.
When you can't find peace in yourself, you can't find peace
in your wallet, you can't find peace in anything. Christ is
our peace. And He's the King. He's over
everything. He totally controls everything.
So when I close, brethren, as we view our sweet and wondrous
Redeemer, may it be with thanksgiving. As He is King. Period. He is King. He has crowns too
numerous to count. And it's all because of who He
is and what He's done for us, for you. If you're a sinner,
He came to seek and to save that which is lost. And how could
He succeed? Because on His head were many
crowns. Lord be glorified. Bruce, would
you close us?