Revelation 22
Notes
Transcript
Revelation teaches the Church to wait with Anticipation for Christ as the fulfillment of every need and joy.
Revelation teaches the Church to wait with Anticipation for Christ as the fulfillment of every need and joy.
We are going to see three places where Christ tells us He is coming soon.
That is the call to wait.
Let’s look at three ways that we are called to wait.
Waiting as Rearranging
Waiting as Rearranging
Behold I am coming soon. There is a reality that Christ has come and is coming again. He is the constant and anticipated guest.
Have you ever had a houseguest? Maybe a dinner guest or maybe even someone coming for the week or weekend?
We just came off the Christmas week and many of us may have been travelling and many of us may have welcomed people into our homes.
What does it look like to anticipate someones arrival?
Your calendar shifts and orients around the person’s arrival
Your resources shift and focus on orienting around the person’s arrival.
And your priorities shift as you understand the individual arriving. You may clean the house, make sure you have enough towels. Maybe you know that person enjoys a certain drink or snack and you pick that up for them before they arrive.
On the anticipation of someone’s arrival, your calendar, your time, your resources all aim for the moment that person crosses the threshold into your home.
In the final chapter of the Bible we hear three times that Christ is coming soon.
In each of those we, as the church, are instructed on what it means to wait for Christ’s arrival.
Again, Revelation has taught us that He will return personally, victoriously, and immanently.
And in the middle of that, as we wait for His return, for the culmination of all things, then we understand what it looks like to wait.
And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
“And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”
We are told that the words are trustworthy and that they are true.
His words bear weight
This means we can understand them and we can also stand on them. For something to be trustworthy means it bears weight.
If it’s true then it’s trustworthy. And if it’s trustworthy we can act on it.
If It is true, then act on that truth.
Everyone wants to be able to act on what is true.
Live your truth is a cultural statement. The point is to find your truth and then act upon it. We all want to understand what is true, to be able to stand up on firm foundation, and then act upon it. If the words of the Scripture are trustworthy and true, then we can stand on them and act on it.
But the angel here is speaking to John telling him that the words spoken here are worthwhile.
Arrangement as preparation
This is the act of preparation. Where we arrange our lives and our time and our resources to wait on Christ.
This means that for the Christian, our lives are tied into a local church. That is where we give our time and resources and our lives to one another.
So if you’re here this morning, excellent. As we collectively wait for Christ. And this is not just a boring hope that He comes soon kind of thing. This is an active waiting. A waiting for the culmination of all things while enjoying the promise of that through relationship with him.
The church celebrates Christ’s return as a reality now. We arrange our resources now for His work and His will.
That’s why people are being baptized and people are coming into membership and people are serving. AS people meet Christ they arrange their lives and their loves around Him.
As you rearrange
Don’t lose who it is you anticipate in your life.
Don’t get distracted by all the smaller things that could dismantle waiting properly for Christ.
We have a lot in the world that is a distraction, that wants full attention, but cannot hold up our full attention.
That distraction becomes our whole world, an entire worldview or ideology, and instead of anticipation we settle.
Don’t lose the sense that Christ has entered and will continue to enter into our lives and into our church until He restores all things.
The job of the church is to witness to fulness in Christ above all things and more than anything.
We can devolve into all sorts of lesser things, but we simply get lost at that point.
And instead of inviting people who are lost and wandering around in the darkness into Christ’s sufficient light, we end up spending all our time on lesser things.
Ordered Love
What is God calling you to rearrange in order to better anticipate Him?
That is how we keep the words of the book. We arrange our lives around Him And around what He has said
Our love is ordered in Christ for God’s sake.
Waiting as Expectation
Waiting as Expectation
The church, you and I are called to stand at the watchtower and look. To watch.
Look what Christ Himself couples together here.
“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Expectation by longing fro something greater because God is greater.
We stand as Christians at the frontier^ of time in every moment because we follow the one who is the beginning and the end.
In Hebrews 11, Abraham was looking forward to something greater, something better. A city whose foundations were solid, whose designer and builder is God. Abraham was looking for something more, something greater, And his obedience, His expectation and rearranging of his life was the testimony of his looking for something better.
We are called to look for better foundations. We look always beyond that into the “cloud of unknowing” who is beyond and before time. Our posture is always at the precipice, following and nodding to what is eternal and ready, outside of time, not to the silliness and surprise of any present moment.
Because it is the one who is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last the beginning and the end, who we should be taking our queues from.
We all live with expectation but the question is what is it we are expecting? And from whom?
As Christians, we stand and look and wait with the One who always has been and always will be. We can stand on His words because His perspective is perfect.
Standing on Tippy toes through limited horizons
Have you ever stood out and looked at the horizon, the place where the land meets the sky and wondered what’s going on, what’s happening past the point you can see? Have you ever wondered what someone else is doing, ever wondered what it’s like living in a city you have never been in?
Have you ever had to stand on your tippytoes because you couldn’t see far enough?
We have to wonder because we live in horizons. We live in a place where we can’t always see what’s next or what’s too far away.
Christ does not have any horizons. There is no place He has not been. He has taken on death and sin for you and for me. He is trustworthy, we can trust Him and expect him because He has no horizons.
Where we are severely limited, He is limitless. And we need Him to define our expectations.
Let’s look at how far His understanding goes.
Here’s what Rev 22 shows us. It brings together all of time, the Scriptures and the created order together. It not only declares the God who was and is and is to come it also shows that His plan has no horizon. It is trustworthy.
Revelation 22 in all of the Bible
Revelation 22 in all of the Bible
In verses 1 through 3 we get this imagery of the New heaven and new earth.
There is a river flowing right through the city.
There is a tree of life that brings healing to the nations
This is not the first time we see this. We would not expect the God of no horizons to introduce brand new things at the end. If fact this is a beautiful callback.
River
River
The river flowing through the city comes from a prophetic image we see from the prophet Ezekiel in the OT.
Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.
The water comes from the temple and flows until it shows trees on either side of the bank that produces life like a river would. It will be the place where people will fish and here fruit from the trees will produce food, and the leaves will be produced for healing.
What we see in the OT Christ makes manifest in this chapter.
What He speaks we can expect He will produce.
But even further back,
Tree
Tree
We see that there is a tree in Revelation. It shares the same imagery with the tree in Genesis.
And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
What Christ, the God of no horizons, speaks He produces.
Everything that is created is fulfilled in Christ.
That is why we show up and worship each week.
That is why we rearrange our lives around Him. That is why the call is not to convenience or comfort but rather to follow Him.
What He has spoken He will fulfill.
When we live out what Christ is doing,
Our lives will point to the redemption in Him that we experience through our great and unending need.
This is why finding our expectation in Christ matters.
Because there is not one who has seen further than Him, or has promised more or greater.
we need the power and presence of the God who has come close. Who can bring life.
Christ is the bringer of life. When we see the tree and when we see the river
then
They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Waiting is hard. It’s hard to wait in lines. It’s hard to wait for things you are hoping for, it’s hard to wait in the middle of the unknown. I had breakfast with a friend who is in between testing and diagnosis right now. That is difficult work.
Usually our waiting in the middle of the difficulties of the world does not breed expectation. Waiting does not usually bring up encouragement
But it depends on who you are waiting for?
This week in line at a store or in line in traffic,
or even waiting for something good or for something difficult.
Your waiting is a horizon. But it is a horizon that Christ doesn’t have to deal with. He sees before and past it.
How can you trust that Christ will bring about what He said He would?
That’s what it means to expect. It is to trust now for what will be certain in the future.
Expectation is faith. Trusting Christ for future unknowns.
We do not do well with future unknowns. We make up all kinds of stories to deal with what we do not know.
What does it mean to rest in expectation that Christ carries every unknown for us?
We don’t have to be anxious, or angry. Not if we are expecting that He will bring every unknown together.
Waiting as proclamation
Waiting as proclamation
look at Rev 22:20
He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
We speak loudest when we are waiting. When we rearrange our lives for a future certainty.
When we trust the future certainty in our current moment.
Because what Christ will do ultimately in all of the created order, breaking and removing sin, recollecting and redeeming those who belong to Him, wiping tears from every eye,
all happen in the human experience of those who trust Him now.
We wait for an eternity with Him, one that we get to share in right now.
We share in it right now through the death and resurrection of Christ. His accomplishment in the cross is the church’s greatest boast.
Our hope is found in a future reality that Christ has given to those who trust in HIm now.
As we enter the new year, how do you have to readjust your waiting?
How has your waiting produced anger instead of love
or anxiety instead of peace?
Where do you need to readjust or expect or proclaim?
All of Scripture is ours as the church to take in and adjust our lives to. Christ has given us His word, He has given us His Spirit to have the strength in order to do just that, readjust to Him
As we head into the new year, I’m inviting you to meet with God who has already met with us, who invites us to Himself by already drawing near.
I’m going to pray through three prayers. A prayer of readjustment. A prayer of expectation, and a prayer of proclamation.
Allow the Lord to move you into the place He is calling you to this year.