Living as Children of the Light

Revelation 22:12–17 NIV

12 “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. 14 “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. 15 Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. 16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” 17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

Here we are the week after Christmas. Maybe you’ve still got decorations up at home, maybe everything is already packed away. Either way, we are now in that time of year when we start to turn our thoughts away from the Christmas season and into what comes next. That’s a good question for us today—what does come next? Now that we have passed that season of Advent expectation for the Messiah to come, where do we go next?

Jesus has come. God dwells among his people. Two thousand years ago Jesus literally came to dwell among his people by being born in Bethlehem. And now for those of us who live after Pentecost, God still literally comes to dwell among his people through his Holy Spirit in our hearts. Born in Bethlehem or born again in us, God is here. And the question is still here: What comes next?

Today we are looking at a passage that comes from the very end of the bible. This is from the final chapter of the final book of scripture. There are the last words from Jesus shared by an angel to the apostle John to write down and share with the churches. These are the final instructions from Jesus to his church. Revelation is a complicated book in the Bible. We don’t have time here today to crack all of that open and explain all the mysteries of Revelation. Today we want to just pull a few ideas from these few short verses that help us consider what it is we do together as a church now that Christmas is over—now that we live in a time when we affirm that Jesus has appeared.

Let’s catch a few themes from this passage. Like so many other passages in scripture, these verses are organized in a reflecting outline. John begins with one idea, moves along to another, and then turns around and goes back to where he began. It looks like this.

A – Jesus comes with invitation to receive life from him (v 12)

B – Jesus is all glorious, the eternal God (v 13)

C – Jesus invites broken sinners to be made clean through his grace (v 14-15)

B’ – Jesus is all glorious, the eternal God (v 16)

A’ – Jesus comes with invitation to receive life from him (v 17)

There are three major themes progressing though these few verses. Jesus comes to his people. Jesus is the all glorious eternal God. Jesus extends grace to broken sinners.

Already Not Yet

At Christmas we celebrate that Jesus has come. The gift of God’s redemption and salvation for his world has already arrived. There is a new life in Christ that is already ours—it has already been given. The cross has already happened. The tomb is already empty. All throughout the New Testament the apostle Paul speaks about salvation in the present tense. He teaches the churches—he teaches us—that salvation and new life in Jesus is not a future event. We are already saved. Our new life in Jesus has already begun.

But this passage today from Revelation reminds us that there is more to the story. Jesus has already come, and he is coming again. God’s redemption of his world has already begun, and Jesus will return to make that redemption complete.

The church today lives in an in-between time. That’s you and me. We live in this period between the first Christmas and what will be a sort of second Christmas. We celebrate the season of Advent with all the expectation of God’s Messiah to come because we still live today in a season of Advent expecting God’s Messiah to return again.

And just as Jesus came two thousand years ago as a gift to his people. He will come again with the gift of living water. Jesus already came and he comes again with an invitation for his people to come to him and receive his gift of new life. This is how we live today within his church. We live as people who have been given the invitation to come to Jesus. We live as a community of faith anticipating the complete fulfilment of his grace.

John says in Revelation that Jesus is coming soon. Nowhere in Revelation does God give a calendar or a timeline for these events. The word “soon” is not meant to tell us a date. Rather, the word “soon” is meant to tell us his return is imminent. It is meant to reassure us that it is a promise of God and it will not fail. The return of Jesus is not a question of maybe-or-maybe-not. So, John uses the word “soon” to remind the church to live as people who are ready for Jesus. We live as those who expect his redemption and his salvation to reach its fulfilment.

Luminous

Verse 13 and verse 16 remind us that Jesus is all glorious, that he is the eternal God. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Jesus is affirmed along with the Father and the Holy Spirit to be the eternal triune God who has always been and always will be.

Jesus refers to himself as the morning star. He is the rising sun. he is the source of light shining into a dark world. We have a word for things that are sources of light. We call them luminous. The sun and the stars are luminous objects because they create light. The reaction of nuclear fusion between hydrogen and helium results in waves of heat and light. Combustion is also luminous. As long as a fire has fuel to keep it going, it will produce heat and light. Thomas Edison discovered that electricity flowing through a wire filament inside of a glass vacuum tube is also luminous; the incandescent light bulb creates light.

It is not the first time the apostle John has used light to describe Jesus. In fact, all the way back in the first chapter of John’s gospel he refers to Jesus as the light of the world.

John 1:4 NIV

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

John 1:9 NIV

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

In some cases the Bible tells us it is literally true. When Jesus took three of his disciples up the mountain and they witnessed the transfiguration, the gospels tells us that Jesus shone like the sun. In Acts 9 when Jesus called and converted Paul on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared before Paul in a blinding flash of light. Revelation tells us that in the new heaven and the new earth there will no longer be a sun. It will no longer be needed because God himself will shine as the source of light and there will never be darkness.

For those who recognize that Jesus is the source of light by which our souls are brought from darkness, the first and best response is always a response of worship. As Scripture gives us various descriptions of the throne room in heaven, there is always a picture of continual worship before God.

Illuminate

This is where our part comes in. The center of this passage in Revelation is about our response to God. Verse 14 says that those who have washed their robes will be blessed with the tree of life. In other words, those who have been made clean by Jesus. The contrast is in verse 15. Those who refuse to accept the gift of God’s grace and continue to center their lives on their own sinful brokenness will be left out. But for those of us who acknowledge that our sinful brokenness can only be made clean through the sacrifice of Jesus, there is the gift of new life in Christ. Once I accept that free gift of God’s grace given through Jesus, I become a new person. I am now a child of God. The Spirit of God now lives within me. That changes who I am.

To say it another way, we illuminate. You and I are not luminous. We do not create any spiritual sort of light. There is nothing in our broken and fallen lives that can create a spark of light on its own. John has declared that Jesus is the light of the world. Only God can break through the darkness of our brokenness and bring light to our souls.

There is a subtle and important difference between something that is luminous and something that is illuminated. Something luminous creates light. Something illuminated reflects light. The screen on the back of the stage can be bright when white images are projected onto it. But the screen itself is not luminous. Rather, the screen is illuminated. It is reflecting the light that comes from the projector hanging from the ceiling.

Author Louie Giglio describes it this way. The sun that rises and sets every day is luminous. The sun creates light in our world. The moon that shines during the night is not luminous. The light that comes from the moon is a reflection of the sun. it is the sun’s light shining on the moon that we see when we look up into the night sky. The moon itself is nothing more than a ball of dirt. There is nothing luminous about dirt. Dirt cannot create light. But in the case of the moon, dirt can reflect light that comes from the sun.

And this is us. This is who we are. We are not luminous. We do not create light on our own in this dark world. But we can be illuminated. We can reflect the light of Jesus—not our own light, but the light of God. Sort of like the moon, the Bible tells us in Genesis that you and I are made from dust. We are nothing more than dirt. But also like the moon, we are dust that can shine brightly when illuminated by the son. Not S U N, but S O N—that son. We are people who can only be made clean by the sacrifice of Jesus. And we are people who can only shine with the light of Jesus.

In Exodus 34, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai after being with God. The Bible tells us that the face of Moses was shining so brightly with the glory of God that he needed to cover himself with a veil just so the people could look at him. It was not the light of Moses. It was the light of God. The apostle Paul puts it this way:

2 Corinthians 3:13–18 NIV84

13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Do you hear that? We are now people who reflect the light of Jesus in our lives and in this world. It is rumored that Thomas Edison unsuccessfully tried thousands of ways to improve the light bulb until be discovered the carbon fiber filament that worked. Creating light is a complicated process. Being luminous is a delicate thing requiring a perfect balance of all the right conditions. However, being illuminated is not nearly so complicated. In fact, illumination really only needs one thing: proximity to the source of light.

Proximity

And this is what it all comes down to for us today. Reflecting the light of Jesus in this world is all about proximity. It is about a closeness to the source of light.

The screen on this stage only reflects the light of the projector because it is placed in just the right location for that to happen. It is in the right proximity to be illuminated. The moon doesn’t always shine in the night sky. Sometimes it is only a sliver of light. It takes just the right proximity for the moon to fully reflect the light of the sun. The moon has to be in just the right place to be a full moon in the night sky. It is all about proximity.

We only reflect the light of Jesus in this world when we live in close proximity to God. It is only when we draw our hearts close to God in worship that we are reminded again and again of his powerful light in our lives and in this world. It is in worship that we remember who God is as our source of light, and who we are as his followers. It is time spent together in the presence of the Lord that keeps us aware of our place in this world. It is the invitation of Jesus to come to him and receive the gift of life in Christ that places us in just the right spot to reflect his light into this world. It is our continual reminder of God’s grace that holds us in a place of illumination. So, come and worship God. Come and receive his gift of new life. Come and reflect his light in your heart, so that God may shine his light brightly through the people of his church and into this community around us today.