Revelation1: What is Revelation All About?

Intro

A couple of years ago Robin and I got to fly to Uruguay to spend a couple weeks with the missions team there. IT is a twelve hour flight from Miami and they often do it overnight. So we were in th middle of the flight, somewhere over Central American i imagine. I had fallen asleep as best you can on a flight and small seats. My body didn’t quite fit in the seat i was given and so while I was sleeing my knee sliipped out into the aisle. I imagine I was sleeping peacefully when I was woken up by this loud bang and incredible pain to my knee. One of the flight attendants was rolling down the aisle at full speed and rammed the entire drink cart into my knee. I woke up into a different world. ALl the sudden I found myself on a plane over Central America with a throbbing knwe. I have never been so shocked awake or woken up so quickly before.

Revelation is like a full speed drink cart to the knee while you are sleeping.

It intends to shock us awake. Any dull ears or hearts, Revelation wants to show with explosive imagery.

The Bible uses wild imagery often to help us see what the Kingdom of God is like

Jesús uses parables to unstick our imaginations. The kingdom of God has no direct parallels. Our minds are dulled and what author James Alison says is “shot through with death” we are preoccupied and distant. We are attentive to different things. God is a calling us to wake up.

We are entering into strange territory for the next few months. It will likely be exciting, a little shocking, fearful, worshipful. It will stretch and hopefully break any faith in anything less than Christ. And it will do it through some very strange images.

Revelation is a strange book. Through the next few months we will see and hear

about heaven’s throne

a heavenly battle

dragons

lakes of fire

angels

An angel with legs like fire who sounded like thunder

worship

A woman clothed with the sun

satan thrown into the earth

more battling

more than one beast

plagues and sickness and lots of death

the fall of great cities and nations

a rider on a white horse. faithful and true

armies of heaven

a wedding banquet

rejoicing

renewal of all things

and all through this narrative we see a lamb who is responsible for the renewal of all things.

and while revelation is going to show us strange images it wants to point us to what life is really about

And the goal of life is To encounter the Lamb of God who is Christ. We are called to encounter the living Christ and be changed by Him.

Flanery O connor, who wrote rather shocking stories in order to show people the beauty of the Gospel, had this to say about writing larger than life characters:

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

The goal in revelation is to be wake up to the realities of the world and the realities of Christ’s work in the world. To let go of things that will fall away and things that will ultimately break. And we are shown these in contrast with Christ who though broken was raised again. We are called to find our trust in Him

But first Revelation has to turn us around a bit. We have to find ourselves disoriented in order to figure out what is true North.

Revelation will make us uncomfortable but only so that we see where faith belongs.

Now just so we are all on the same page. This series is not taking Revelation as speculative. that means that we are not going to look at the images and try and attach them to people and events happening in the world. We are going to take a historical theological look at revelation as John the author of the book understood it. It has past and future implications. But even though revelation has future implications and connections, there is no one alive that would be able to with any spiritual accuracy. that they can determine exactly what is going on.

Often times those kinds of pursuits are not about worship and not about the Lamb, but often about something else together.

Our goal in this series is to follow the Lamb. Is to look to Him as how to live, act, and worship.

The goal of Revelation is “uncivil worship and witness” in following Jesus into His new creation

The book of Revelation is really a letter written by the apostle John while he was being held prisoner for his faith on the island of Patmos.

He is writing this letter to 7 churches that we will soon meet and he is doing so to communicate all that is happening in their world and the world to come.

This though is unlike other biblical letters in that John uses what’s called apocalyptic imagery.

apocalyptic imagery is larger than life images that the Bible is giving us to help us understand spiritual realities.

The hope in apocalyptic literature is to shake us into seeing how things really are.

As we jump into the book, we enter through the deep end. In fact, there is no shallow end of the pool in Revelation. We are thrown into a heavenly reality right away.

We interact with God who is not simply meeting us where we are at. In revelation we see that God is not just coming to comfort the hurting or console us. He is giving us something much more than that. He is offering Himself to us in a way that a new way to think and believe and act. Revelation is not just wild imagery and a cosmic battle, we are shown an entirely new life possible in Christ. That Christ has come not to just comfort but to recreate all things.

To understand Revelation is to understand God’s intent for Creation. Revelation begins in the book of Genesis with God’s creative act before that fall of sin. It continues in the death and resurrection of Jesus that shows us God’s actions to recreate humanity in Christ.

By the time we get to Revelation 1 we aren’t just starting the discussion about final things. We realize that we are entering into the reality of God’s intent for creation all along. That all of creation, being sustained by Him, would be reconciled by Him.

He is the lever on which the entire universe stands or falls. We are shown that through this book.

Revelation shows that Christ stands even after everything else falls

Look how the chapter begins.

Revelation 1:4–7 ESV

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 kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us 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. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

It begins with Christ coming again. The first time HE came as resurrected Savior. The second time He comes it will be as reigning King.

God is coming again to rule and all will see HIm and contend with who God is. It is a strong opening. It is meant to open our eyes and shock us a little.

As the passage moves on, we get this description that begins to be formed around who God is. It is not just that God can reign as king, we are shown what kind of God He is.

Revelation shows the beginning and the end in Christ

it is not only final things it is God encompassing all things. We see Gods creative order in Genesis one and Gods creative redemption of that order in Revelation

Revelation 1:8 ESV

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

He is the Alpha and Omega. Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and Omega is the last. Christ is the beginning and the end. And we not only hear it in the beginning of the book but we see it in the end of the book.

also see Rev 22:13

Revelation 22:13 ESV

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

God is first. He is last. because we will be barraged wi5 wild images of chaos violence and danger, we are made certain in the beginning who will reign

Revelation shows us that Every human future stands or falls on Christ

look at how the book describes Christ:

Revelation 1:17–18 ESV

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 of Death and Hades.

Christ tells John He is the first and the last. He was before all things and in Him all things hold together.

This is important to realize that Christ is first and last. He is the first One to show up and the last One to leave. Because all creation belongs to Him.

The book of Revelation shows us the spiritual reality of things. That God is first and last. We are told that and we will be shown that throughout.

Christ was here before anything and is the last one to leave. He is the perpetual king of the Hill.

We area also shown right away who it is that John is talking to. Where are these directives coming from?

Revelation 1:12–16 ESV

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.

We are given these strong images of Jesus in revelation because we are shown who is the One who is victorious.

Most of the book will be a battle between God and Babylon, which is a city who is firmly set against God. Babylon resists God. God fights Babylon. And in it’s place we get a picture of a new Jerusalem. Cities represent ways in which humanity has chosen to live completely independently of God. Jerusalem will be God’s work to recreate the city with Him as dependent.

Babylon is everything that humanity has done to restart creation on it’s own. Who has tried and tried and tried to live life independently of God.

Revelation will show how futile that is. It doesn’t hint at it, it shouts it.

Because it takes the perspective that Babylon has been shouting it’s divorce from God. Babylon shouts that it can take things from here, trying to live independent from God Himself.

Revelation will show the folly in that.

And it will begin to show it with the description of God about HImself and then Christ for who He is.

We see Christ who’s face is like the sun shining in full strength.

At the end of Revelation, there is a new city, Jerusalem, where we understand that God has restored all things. And in the description of a new Jerusalem we get this:

Revelation 21:22–24 ESV

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,

We see in the face of Christ the sun. We see in the new Jerusalem the glory of God as the sun.

We are given the image of Christ as bright as the sun and left with the image that we see by the light of the glory of God as the sun.

All our efforts are directed to Christ who is the light who we see by.

What Christ promises to hold onto He does not let go. Revelation reminds us that we can wait in worship and witness.

"Bishop Augustine sought words of wisdom to offer his deeply shaken congregation, some of them refugees from Rome.

“God does not raise up citadels of stone and marble for us; outside of this world he raises up citadels of the Holy Spirit for us, citadels of love which could never collapse, which will for ever stand in glory when this world has been reduced to ashes. ... Rome has collapsed and your hearts are outraged by this. Rome was built by men like yourself. Since when did you believe that men had the power to build things that are eternal? Your souls, filled with the light of the Holy Spirit, will not perish.”" - Augustine

communion

Communion is the way for us to wait as witness in Christ as we remember His promises.