A Vision Worth Living For

Introduction

Puzzles: One way to tell that the Chenery family is fully relaxed and just enjoying ourselves is when there is a puzzle being worked through on the dinner table. I love a good puzzle. The thing with a puzzle is that there are a thousand little pieces that at first you can’t tell how they fit together. But on the cover of the box is an image of what the final project should look like. That vision drives the whole project. You start to organize certain colors into certain corners where you know they belong. Could you imagine how difficult it would be be given a bag with 1,000 piece puzzle inside, with no image of what the final project should look like. You’d have no idea were to begin. You wouldn’t know what you were working towards.

Personal: Many people are going through life just that way. They have no clear vision guiding their life, and so the pieces and circumstances, come one at a time, and its difficult to fit them together in some cohesive way. Many more have a vision, but its the wrong vision, it’s a lesser vision. And you’re trying to fit the pieces of your life together, and they’re not fitting. And you’re frustrated. And its not that they don’t fit, its just that they don’t fit they way you’re trying to make them fit. What’s your vision? What’s driving you?

Context: We are in our third sermon on the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. In our first two sermons we have been introduced to a number of critical themes that will remain with us throughout our study. Next week we enter mini-series, if you will, within Revelation. Chapters two through constitute seven letters to seven well-known churches across seven different cities. In coming weeks we will study each of those seven letters detail. Today’s text functions like the preamble to those seven letters. In the middle of it, is a vision of Christ. This is the first of seven visions of Christ that will occur in Revelation. The vision is glorious. In fact it is overwhelming. And in each of the seven letters in the coming chapters, John will pull elements from this vision of Christ to serve as anchors for God’s struggling and beleaguered church to remind themselves of the one who defends them and who stands in authority over them. The point of the vision could be summarized this way:

Main Idea: Christ in all His glory is the only vision worth living for

Meaning & Application

The passage is fairly neatly divided into three sections. Verses 9-11 are the setup of the vision of Christ. Verses 12-16 are the vision itself. Verses 17-20 are the response to the vision of Christ. Let’s carefully walk through each section.

THE SETUP OF THE VISION OF CHRIST

We begin in the first section, verses 9-11, the setup to the vision of Christ. In a way, it’s a bit like we’re putting the puzzle pieces on the table. What are the pieces we’re dealing with?

Revelation 1:9–11 “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.””

John: The Apostle John identifies himself again as the author of the book. He calls himself their brother, this is theological language that was common from the very first days of Christianity. In Christ, we have been adopted into the family of God, and therefore we are all brothers and sisters.

Partner: He calls himself their partner in “the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance.” These three descriptions are important. The “tribulation” describes the hardships and sufferings both he and his recipients have experienced as a result of becoming Christians. The “kingdom” describes the Kingdom of Christ, of which Christ is the head, of which they all are a part of through faith. The “patient endurance” is a key phrase. It describes the mindset of how Christians endure suffering and persecution. They together have had to train themselves to endure patiently, to wait for Christ’s response.

Patmos: John explains that the vision he received of Christ occurred while he was on the island of Patmos. Patmos is a small island off the coast of Turkey. The context is clear that John was there not because he was on a missionary journey to that small island, but rather he was banished there, as a punishment for preaching about Christ. Let us not forget that throughout Christian history, there have been seasons where to preach the Word of God faithfully is a likely death sentence. We don’t know the exact specifics, but Christian history has remembered John’s story this way.

Roman Empire: During the rise of the early Church, Rome was the empire in charge. While Rome was a very polytheistic culture, with many different gods and many different temples, the emperial cult was ever more important. The imperial cult was responsible for making a Caesar not just a leader to be respected but a God to be worshipped. Depending on the emperor at the time, punishment could vary greatlyfor refusing to worship the emperor. Christians, of course, were a bit a growing pain in the empire’s side. They, in general, refused to worship Caesar, and they were were willing to die, rather than worship Caesar. Not only that but Christians were a strange group that were not just growing among one ethnic group, such as Jews in Israel. That is a bit more of a manageable group. But these early Christians came from all different walks of life, all different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, rich and poor, slave and free. The empire was at a bit of a loss of what to do with this new religion as they saw it.

The Problem with Martyrs: And what they were learning, slowly, was that martyrdom only fueled the Christian’s cause. The more they killed the church leaders, the more the message of the gospel spread like wildfire. People, despite their very real fear, were becoming emboldened by their leaders who would take their testimony of the resurrected Christ all the way to the grave. The vast majority of the Apostles were killed in horrible ways for their testimony of Jesus Christ and their eye-witness account of his resurrection from the dead.

Exiled on Patmos: The legend behind John is perhaps more legend that reality, we don’t know. But history records that he was placed in a large tub of boiling oil to be killed for his faith. But the Lord delivered him, though he suffered greatly. Therefore, rather than turn him into a martyr to encourage the people, they tried to silence him, by exiling him to the island on Patmos. Little did they realize, you can’t silence the Word of God. This little book we are studying right now would become a spark that would erupt among the small and seemingl fragile church.

Wrap Up: So when John writes that he is their “partner in tribulation,” he means it.

In Spirit: What are the puzzle pieces on the table for John. He is an aging man. He has suffered greatly. He is cut off from the churches he helped to plant and feed. From a human standpoint, Rome seems like it has all the authority and power of culture. It would have been easy for John to quietly fade away. Yet what does he do? Where do we find him? We find John worshipping in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. Verse 10, John states that he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” The Lord’s day is Sunday, the day the early church began to practice the sabbath to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. Yes, it is one of the 10 Commandments for those who follow God to practice the Sabbath on Sunday. To be “in the spirit,” means that John had postured himself to receive from God. He was in prayer and worship. And it was then, on that tiny insignificant island of Patmos, that the aging John received the vision of visions.

Wrap Up: None of us are prophets. Nobody should be receiving fresh revelation from God like John. But all of us who are Christians need to regularly posture ourselves like John “in the Spirit.” It would have been easy for John to think himself forgotten, his trials too great, his time for effective use in the Kingdom waining. But John chooses to worship. Church, your heart posture before God, to regularly get alone with God, with the Scriptures open, with a heart to receive from God wisdom and understanding, God is greatly honored through that labor. Your commitment on the Lord’s Day to gather in worship is no small thing. This is how we begin to properly see the various puzzle pieces of our lives properly.

The setup of the vision of Christ.

THE VISION OF CHRIST

Now, we consider the vision of Christ itself.

Vision: What is a vision? Well a dream is something that you see when your eyes are closed and your unconcious. A vision is something your eyes see while you are conscious. A vision is when God allows you to see things on another plane or dimension. What we’ll find in this vision, as with almost every other vision we encounter in Revelation, is that John does not simply write down what he sees without any thought. Rather, all of his descriptions of what he sees borrow images and scriptures from the Old Testament. This is important! John is showing that what he saw, while on the island of Patmos, is not only in direct correlation to what other prophets saw, but that what he saw is a direct fulfillment of what other prophets saw. And so, in many of these visions I will be taking us backwards to the Old Testament passage John is pulling from and teaching us why that passage is significant. Let us read the vision.

Revelation 1:12–16 “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.”

Let’s go through this vision phrase by phrase.

Seven Golden Lampstands: First we are told in verse 12 that Christ is standing in the midst of 7 golden lampstands. And, if we jump down to verse 20 at the end of our passage, we see that the lampstands represent the seven churches John is writing to. This is undoubtedly a reference to Zechariah 4:2. The prophet Zechariah, writing hundreds of years before Christ wrote.

Zechariah 4:2 “And he said to me, “What do you see?” I said, “I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it.”

Zechariah wrote to a struggling people of God in the Old Testament, encouraging them that though they were small, God would help them complete the building of the temple in the midst of their enemies. Here, John draws on that imagery and essentially, “though you are small, God will build his Church in the midst of your enemies.” Notice, Christ is in the midst of the lampstands. Christ is not far from his Church even when they are suffering. He is walking in their midst.

Son of Man: John says in the midst of those lampstands was one “like the Son of man.” Interesting language, on the one hand it means he had human form. On the other hand he is quoting from Daniel 7:13. Daniel 7 is a remarkable OT passage where Daniel has a vision of God, whom he calls the Ancient of Days. Here is Daniel’s description.

Daniel 7:13–14 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

This language of “son of man” is full of glory and wonder. Here John is triggering ancient ideas of dominion and a kingdom and glory, and the nations serving the King.

Clothing & Hair: John goes on in verses 13-14 to describe Christ’s hair and clothing and eyes. Again, John is pulling some imagery from the same chapter in Daniel that we just saw.

Daniel 7:9 “…his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire.”

He’s saying, “What Daniel saw, I saw, and it was Christ all along.” Make no mistake about it, John is equating the resurrected Christ with the Ancient of Days, with God himself. This is very consistent for John across all his writings. What does the imagery mean?

The clothing is symbolic both of the kingly and priestly roles that Christ has.

His radiant white hair is a symbol of the perfection of wisdom.

His flaming eyes are an image that convey that as God he sees all and nothing avoids his vision.

Feet, Voice, Face: John goes in verses 15-16 to describe his feet, his voice, and his face.

Revelation 1:15–16 “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.”

Once again he is pulling imagery that other prophets had previously used to describe their vision of God.

Daniel 10:6 “His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude.”

Let me interpret just two of these images.

Stars: In his right hand are the seven stars. Verse 20 informs us that the seven stars are representative of the seven “angels of the seven churches” to whom he is writing. That word “angel” either refers to literal angels who watched over the churches protecting them, or it is a spiritual way of speaking about their pastor as the angel of their church. The point christ is making here, is that the churches are in his hands, the safest place they could be.

Two Edges Sword: Two-edged sword that comes from his mouth. A sword is a weapon. It is a tool used for piercing and for cutting down and for gaining victory. It proceeds from his mouth, because God’s word is a sword. It pierces the heart. It convicts the soul of sin. It reveals the hidden thoughts and intentions and calls every soul who encounters to deal honestly with God.

Can You Imagine?: Can you imagine, what it must have been like on that Lord’s day, for John to be in the Spirit and to turn around and to see Christ, like that, in all of his glory. And to suddenly flip through the roledex in his mind of the Old Testament passages, and to say “That’s what the prophet Daniel. That’s what the prophet Zechariah saw.” We have two responses to this vision.

Awe & Worship: First and most importantly, worship! What does “worship” mean? It means to have all of your affections and desires stirred towards someone or something. What should happen as you read this description of Christ, as when we read the remaining six visions of Christ in Revelation, is that your heart as a Christian beats for Christ. This is Christ in his glory. Don’t read this and just move on to the action of the book of Revelation. Let this description of your king press upon you. He is the one to whom you have your entire existence. See him in his glory. Worship him with focus.

What’s Your Vision: Second, I want to return this idea of the visions that lead our lives. I asked at the start of the sermon what vision leads your life, and how easy it is to settle for lesser visions? I confess how easy it is for me. There are a thousand lesser visions, and not all of them bad. We have a vision of our career that gets us up every day. We have a vision of our children and what they can become that drives our thoughts and our passions. We have a vision of retirement that shapes our investments and our efforts. We have a vision of our legacy behind us, that we’ll be remembered by, and we make choices and we sacrifice for it. Here is the problem. You’re going to get puzzle pieces in your puzzle that don’t fit that vision. I don’t think John had being boiled alive and exiled on Patmos on his list of things that would help accomplish his vision. But there he was.

And we can choose to do one of two things. Either we settle in this life for a vision that is less than ultimate, and we just force ourself through this life. Or at some point we realize that there is only vision that we were meant to live for, God in all of his glory. This vision helps us understand how all the pieces fit together. Suffering has its place. Success has its place. Family has its place. Friendship has its place. The Sabbath has its place. Courage has its place. Kingdom has its place. Aging has its place. Dying has its place. Rejoicing has its place. These suffering Christians in these seven churches needed a vision reorientation, and might I suggest so do we! Fix your eyes on Christ your glorious redeemer. And don’t take your eyes off him and until your truly brought to your face in worship!

THE RESPONSE TO THE VISION

Lastly, let us see the response to the vision. And in this response, it is almost as if Jesus reveals the ciritical piece of the puzzle. The piece that must be in place to unlock the whole thing. John continues to write in verse 17:

Revelation 1:17–20 “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. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”

John’s Initial Response: John’s initial response is to fall down as if dead is the very consistent response of essentially every prophet that finds himself in throne room of God. Isaiah fell prostrate and confessed his sin. Daniel collapsed and lost all strength. Ezekiel fell on his face. Habakkuk collapsed and his body trembled. Jeremiah screamed out in fear and confessed his sin. This is the response of sinful men who encounter moral purity. They immediately know they do not belong in the presence of God.

Total Depravity: Many people today false believe that all of us deserve to be in the presence of God. They falsely believe the lie that God will quickly overlook our moral impurity and our sin, and were we to stand before Him, we would be warmly received. But this is simply a deceptive lie. Don’t take my word for it. Many men have been listed in Scripture as appearing before God, all of them had the same experience. If your sins are not atoned for on the day you stand before that holy God, make no doubt about it, you will fall apart immediately and you will not be invited into his presence. Our sins separate us from God.

God’s Response: But look at Christ’s response to John.

Right Hand: He lays his hand on his shoulder. This is exactly what Christ did for Daniel in Daniel 10:10 which was already quoted. This is symbol of welcome.

Fear Not: His first words to John in that moment are “Fear not.” John was terrified because he knew his sin, and he knew that he did not belong in God’s presence. But Christ tells him not to fear.

First and Last: Christ says “I am the first and the last.” in verse 8 God had described himself as the Alpha and the Omega, meaning he exists before all time and outside of time. Christ now takes that description upon himself. He is the first and the last. This same language will be used again by Christ in the very last chapter of Revelation where Jesus calls himself the “Alpha and the Omega.”

Died, Alive: And then, the gospel. Why should John not fear? Why can holiness lay his hand on impurity like John. Because Christ died and rose again. There in verse 18 we have the very heart of the gospel. Christ’s death and resurrection. No man can stand before God and live, save the man whose sins have been atoned for. Christ died on the cross in order atone for our sin. And all who receive that gift of grace by faith, not only have their sins forgiven, but have a right to stand before God as beloved sons and daughters.

Keys: Christ now holds the keys of death and the of Hades (the place of the dead). There is only one who holds those keys. There is only one path through Hades into Heaven. It is through Christ.

Plead: Oh I plead with you today. The right hand of fellowship with God is available to all who desire it. Do not leave here today until you are confident that you have received this free gift of grace. There will be many who stand before God on their judgment day who are turned away despite countless opportunities to repent and receive Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Only a few will receive the right hand of welcome. Don’t be the fool. Believe on Him who died and rose from the grave.

Conclusion

I want to close with an important word. Think for a moment of how incredible it would have been to be John, and to see Christ in this way. Church… one day you will too. One day, perhaps very soon, Christ will descend. He will return in all power and all authority. And if he so determines to take you home before he returns, then at that moment you will see exactly what John saw. And when you see your eyes that beatific vision, all words other than “He is worthy” will escape your lips. All small thoughts you ever had about God will flee. All half-hearted worship you ever mustered will be be expunged from your heart, because to behold Christ is to be utterly changed forever. This is your King. This is your commander. We honor by faith now, believing the Word of God. We will honor by sight then, seeing with our own eyes the fulfilment of our faith.