Sermon Tone Analysis

First of all, just want to say thanks to everyone for your warm welcome to Nashville.

My sons Ethan and Carsten and have been so blessed, by the encouragement, support, and welcome that you’ve shown.

I’m learning that there are certain things in Nashville that are kind of a big deal.

Princes or Hattie B’s.

Ladybird or Tacqeria Del Sol, Probably the thing that ya’ll are most fanatic about has got to be football.

Im learning its not even the NFL- it’s college ball.

From Orange, to Red, to Blue, I’m learning that football is serious business.

I’ve heard that some churches shut down because of it.

When something is a big deal life as we know it stops.

We throw parties, we gather together, and we celebrate the victories.

I worry sometimes that one of the greatest dangers facing the church is that the incredible beauty and power of the presence of Jesus in our midst becomes a little too ordinary.

After a while, the universe shaking power of the presence of God is reduced to a weekly gathering, where we see a few people, shake a few hands, and then go back to "real life.”

I wonder today, “How big is our Jesus?”

if you have your Bible, please join me in reading Revelation 1:12-20.

Today, we’re launching into a new series that we’re calling “7 letters to 7 churches.”

While people often connect the book of Revelation to mysterious images like a seven headed dragon or seven seals, the point of the book of revelation is pretty straight forward.The book begins with a revelation of Jesus to seven churches and I believe draws us to a central reality.

Jesus is being revealed as the king over the church, world, and every opponent.”

As we get started, I think its important to understand to understand the context of the letter.

John is one of the last living disciples, he’s watched as friends have either abandoned the faith or have lost their lives clinging to it.

He finds himself in exile on an Island called Patmos.

It would be so easy to believe that the best of John's days were behind him.

Imprisoned and tortured he too must have wondered what His fate would be.

To make matters worse, churches were being infiltrated by false teachers that would seem to shipwreck their faith.

Where is Jesus in all this chaos?

Sound familiar?

What John will do, is call us to wrestle with this question of who is Jesus?

Revelation as Apocalyptic literature.

Apocolypisis - Revealing or uncovering.

Point of the book is not these cosmic signs, but how these signs point to

Jesus as the reigning King.

Jesus is the King of His Church

Verse 9 tells us that while John is in exile he has a vision.

He hears a voice calling him to write to the churches.

What follows is a description of what he sees.

We’re told in verse 12 that he sees seven golden lamp stands and one that was set in the midst of them like a son of man.

Later in verse 20, we’re given the insight that these seven lamp stands represent the seven churches.

We might ask, what do these churches have to do with us?

These churches represent the very real struggles that every church will face whether it be opposition from the outside or within.

This image of a lamp stand refers back to the lamp stands that stood in the places where where Israel would worship before Jesus.

In both the temple and the tabernacle, there were lamp stands that were symbols of the presence of God in those places.

Strict guidelines were given that the lamp stand was never to go out because God’s presence was continually with the people.

Zechariah 4 connects the lamp stand to the place where the voice and will of God gets carried out in the world.

Jesus’ use of the lamp stand to describe the church is powerful.

It says so much of the purpose and call of the church.

It really is a humbling reality when we recognize that as the church we have been raised up to reflect the glory and beauty of Christ in the world.

God has set his Spirit in the midst of us to make His love and power known.

Again, its one of those things that we know, but do we really believe it?

Make no mistake, there is a very real enemy that would love to hinder and cover the lamp stands from reflecting His love.

While many of us don’t know the persecution from without we’ve seen countless stories of churches that have imploded from within.

I’ve heard horror stories of abuse that has taken place as the church drifted from her call.

It tends to come down to two primary tactics that Satan uses.

The first is that he’ll attempt to get us to blend Christianity with something else.

Christianity and a political party.

Christianity and self help.

Christianity and image.

As CS Lewis warns in the Screwtape Letters.

As soon as Christianity becomes an and, it ceases to be Christianity.

What marks the distinctiveness of the local church is a radical commitment to follow Jesus and him alone.

The second is that he’ll lead us into a kind of practical atheism.

Where we know the realities of the presence of God, but we as if it has no bearing on our lives.

A real question, “When was the last time that the presence of Jesus interrupted our day?”

My fear is that Christ can become so familiar that we furnish a brand on Christianity that has no Christ in it.

Its simply going through the religious motions once a week and it anything but the radical call to follow him.

At some level, we have to ask, who is the king of the church?

The answer to that question changes everything.

If Jesus is the King of His church, the measure of any church is not the quality of her programs, the size of her budget, or the quality of the preacher.

It’s the degree to which she makes Jesus famous and raises up people who do the same.

Repeatedly throughout the letter, we find warnings that if we drift from that message, the church’s purpose for existing is lost.

What do we do about the persecutions that we

2) Jesus is the King over everything

What then of the difficulties that face the church from the outside?

You turn on the news and you hear the stories of the pandemic, threats of war, global instability, and you wonder how in the world is the church going to survive this?

What if our hope is not in our own craftiness or strategy but in the power of the one who is the King?

In verses 13-16, John now begins a description of the messenger He sees.

This one is none other than Jesus himself.

These descriptions that John gives may seem random to us the West, but to a Jewish audience they would have been

especially poignant.

All of them are coming together to show us just how big Jesus really is.

First, Jesus is bigger than our weakness.

In verse 13, we are told that He is one wearing a white robe with a long golden sash.

It’s interesting because this term only appears here in the NT.

However in the Greek Translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, it appears many times to describe the garments that the high

priest would wear when he went into the presence of God.

Before Jesus, the priest was a mediator who would go before God, hear his word, deliver it to the people and intercede for the nation of Israel.

Each year, a lamb would be sacrificed as a symbol of the punishment for sin that the people deserved.

Now through his sacrifice, he has once for all paid the price for our sin.

I love the way the the author of the letter of Hebrews puts it when He writes in Hebrews 4:14-16.

"Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Satan will often discourage us by telling us that we can never be used by God because of our past.

These verses are a reminder that our hope lie not in our ability to be good enough, but in the faithfulness of the one who is enough.

As we wrestle with our brokenness and we’ve brought those things before him, “How big is your Jesus?

His description doesn’t stop there.

Secondly, Jesus is bigger than the future’s uncertainty.

In verse 14, were told that he had hair of white- white like snow.

Throughout the ancient world, this would have been a symbol of Jesus’ power as the one who existed before all things.

The one who the author of Hebrews describes in Chapter 2 as the one for whom, and to whom, and through whom are all things forever.

Again we might think, why is this important?

The answer is that its making the claim that Jesus is the oldest, wisest, and all knowing being that has ever existed.