Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

I’ve been prompted by the Holy Spirit that it is high time to start back up an exegetical series “verse-by-verse” through a particular book.

Some of you know already which book that I will be preaching on for a while.

Due to this particular book’s unique aspects, I felt that it be necessary to start topically this morning before transitioning to the typical exegetical style.

Why? because it is the Book of Revelation.

Simply choosing the Book of Revelation to preach through is no small task.

Many questions flooded my mind as they might be now filling your mind.

but before we get any further I want to first discuss for a brief moment the question why is this the case?

why is it that the Book of Revelation causes within us so many questions and so much discussion?

In fact, it is a big challenge to decide what to talk about and what not to talk about.

If we were to discuss everything in detail that is contained in the 22 chapters of Revelation, it may easily be years before we moved on to another book.

but why? why is it that this is such a special book?

why is it not as easy to spend years on expounding upon the rich wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs?

or spend years on meditating and praying through the Psalms?

After all, isn’t the Book of Revelation just as much the word of God as the Psalms, Proverbs, the Gospels, or even the book of Numbers?

Who here can quote 2 Tim 3:16?

ALL scripture!

yet there are certain books of the Bible that we somehow treat differently.

I think most of us here are familiar with the fact that this book was written by the Apostle John.

This is the same John that wrote the Gospel of John, the Epistle of 1st John, 2nd John, and even 3rd John.

Yet, none of those other books seem to necessitate the introduction that the Book of Revelation seems to require.

“If We Believe the Living Word”

A few years ago, in a railroad train a lawyer, seeing I had a Bible in my hand, asked, "Surely you don't believe that Deuteronomy belongs to the canon of Scripture?"

I answered by asking the question, "Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead?"

He said, "Yes, certainly, I believe the resurrection of the God-Man to be the most authenticated fact in all history.

But that has nothing to do," he said, "with my question of the inspiration of the Book of Deuteronomy."

"Oh, yes, it has," was my reply.

"Was Christ, as proved by the resurrection, divine and God's Son and perfect in life and teaching?"

"Yes."

"Then you must take your question to the final court of appeal.

Christ expounded unto his disciples the Scriptures, beginning at Moses and all the prophets concerning Himself, and called it Scripture, and endorsed it as God's Word.

Deuteronomy was in it."—Sunday

School Times.

I just don’t want any of us to get the idea that somehow the book of Revelation is better than other books of the Bible.

Transition:

The need to “rightly divide the word of truth” or in other words, to properly handle the Book of Revelation is paramount thanks to some abuses we have seen in the last few centuries to this book.

I want to take this morning to look at some reasons why Revelation needs delicate care in proper study.

Part of the reason we have to be delicate comes from all the fighting Christians have done among themselves over proper interpretation.

But these same Christian might never argue different ways to interpret 3 John.

BUT 1, 2, or, 3 John don’t record any “visions” of John’s either.

I. Proper Interpretation

Interpretation, therefore, is a hot topic issue and, by necessity, must be decided before we can get too far.

To get some preliminary things out of the way we understand that the Bible is a human book--it was written by humans to humans to be understood just like about every other book out there.

However, unlike any other book, it is at the same time a divine book, written by God, the Spirit through men that does contain certain concepts that reach beyond our limited understanding; i.e. the Trinity.

Yet despite our finite minds attempting to grasp the infinite, this divine book is written for us to still understand.

“The truth is, it doesn't matter what a verse means to me, to you, or to anyone else.

All that matters is what the verse means!”

― John F. MacArthur Jr., Charismatic Chaos

Two groups in Human communication:

Sender - must accurately put into words his thoughts

Receiver - must accurately understand the thoughts and words

In scripture, the Sender is God working through human transmitters.

Words are not altogether precise particularly in abstract concepts i.e. love.

The Sender and Receiver must work at both ends for effective communication.

You must use effort to understand the Bible;  Scripture is written at a different time to a different culture - so more effort is required.

3 Guidelines in understanding communication

To Understand a meaning of any scripture or really any author, one begins with the ordinary meaning of the language/words 

You must identify the type of language being used i.e. poetry, prose, figurative, literal, narrative

Ordinarily the interpreter is seeking a single meaning from what the Sender said

Identify the most natural, clear meaning - start with the historical, physical, cultural setting of the passage

Method to make sure the meaning of words - "Word Studies"

Surety of the flow of though through clarifying sentence structure.

Understand the meaning of the passage by relating it to its immediate context and even the context of the whole book

Identify the literary style of the passage 

A literal approach is the most serious way to interpret the Bible- if the Bible is to be authoritative it must be understandable 

We must begin with the assumption that it must be interpreted literally with the attention to figurative speech in a passage.

Genre interpretation- literal passages literally (i.e.

“And then I saw..”

He really did see it), then figurative passages figuratively (i.e "it was like a..." or “it was as a...”), poetic passages poetically (i.e.

“the four corners of the Earth” or “the Earth is held up by four pillars”) There is language of appearance (i.e.

“the sun is setting”) and idioms to a culture (i.e.

“He kicked the bucket”)

Seek the single meaning of the passage unless the authors (or The Author) indicate that multiple meanings are implied.

One of the primary challenges of interpreting Revelation is determining what kind of literature it is.

At first glance it appears to be a class of its own: apocalyptic (exotic visions and symbolism, and prophecy).

However, the reference to the human author and audience, the standard greeting (1:4) and ending (22:21), and the mini-letters in chapters 2 and 3 indicate that we must also view Revelation as a standard letter.

While this may seem more confusing, it actually simplifies things, for we can now view the book as a much longer literary cousin of the letter of Jude, which also contains extensive apocalyptic and prophetic material within an epistle framework.

So we can interpret Revelation in much the same way as we would Jude.

There are four major viewpoints in interpreting Revelation.

1.

The Idealist allegorical or spiritual approach.

Here the whole book becomes symbolic.

It becomes a spiritual struggle, a spiritual battle and there is nothing physical involved.

This view says that near nothing this book past chapter 4 is literal, it is only an allegory describing our struggles throughout our lives.

There are many problems to this approach, but probably the biggest problem is attempting to allegorize everything makes it trivial to most everybody and a practice in arbitrary interpretation—it can mean anything to anyone.

2. The preterist view.

This approach considers all prophecy in revelation as completed already in history, rather than future.

This view holds that all prophecy was fulfilled historically at that time (the past), so it has nothing to say to us about the future.

This approach uses a little bit of literal interpretation but also relies heavily on allegory as well in order to fit all of the prophecies being fulfilled by the end of the 1st century.

This group must say that the book of Revelation was written in Nero’s reign before the destruction of the temple in AD 70 rather than Domitian’s reign in Rome.

Again, there are many problems to this approach, but probably the biggest is

3.

The historical view.

This approach uses Revelation as a chronicle of the major events throughout the history of the church age.

Many of you might have heard that the Churches in chapters two and three represent different times throughout church history with struggles that are predominantly akin to the problems of the churches in those chapters, and the question becomes “which age are we in?” Although, you can still interpret those churches as different times during the church age AND NOT take a “historical approach” to interpretation, the whole book, according to the “historical approach,” with most the 22 chapters is built around the history of the church age.

4. The futuristic view.

This view treats Revelation as having historical value for the people in John’s day but its emphasis is on future events.

Starting with the fourth chapter, most of the events have yet to happen.

It gives us a picture of what the future holds for the believer and the unbeliever.

This is the most literal interpretation and the most accurate—no allegorizing necessary even with clear uses of metaphors and similes.

The golden rule of hermeneutics - "If the plain sense makes common sense, seek no other sense."

Last thing I want to say about interpretive challenges is that Revelation makes extensive use of the OT and other writings in Revelation and its use of symbolism and numbers.