Sermon Tone Analysis

As we end this current year together today and begin next year together as a congregation next week, we are, perhaps, troubled by what may lie ahead for us.

We face changes, both known and unknown, individually, in our families, our workplaces, our society, our nation, in our church and the church at large.

Our hearts and minds certainly can race toward a lot of “what ifs?”

And we may have a pretty good assortment of some “most likely to occurs” thrown in for good measure.

Some things we hope are for the good; we know that somethings may be heavy and grievous.

So we might be given over to fears and anxiousness about what may ensue.

The way we best can deal with this is to keep our eyes and hearts fixed upon our Exalted Head, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to draw from Him all that we have need of.

There are things about Christ that we need very much at the end of this year.

(Piper)

We need the perseverance of Christ in the face of affliction.

We need the energy and strength of Christ in the face of depleting pressures.

We need the wisdom of Christ in the face of complexities of life and ministry.

We need the stability of Christ in the midst of rapid social and political and personal changes all around us.

We need the assurance of his sovereign authority in a culture sliding farther and farther from his truth.

(Piper)

It is no exaggeration to say that we need Christ present to our view and for our fellowship more than we need anything else.

(Piper)

So, to encourage us in the coming year, let us fix our eyes upon Jesus — Heb 12:2

A. His Location - Revelation 1:9-10

This vision is given to John by God.

It is written down and sent by John to the seven churches of Asia Minor, which is today the western part of Turkey.

He is on the isle of Patmos, a small island in the Aegean sea.

He describes himself to the churches as their brother.

This is significant because it is an indication of how closely he is aligning himself with them in what is to come.

(Pett)

He is a ‘partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom (kingly rule) and patient endurance which are in Jesus’.

Thus he aligns himself with them in what lies ahead.

(Pett)

John was there on Patmos as a prisoner of the Roman Empire.

But though he may have been sentenced by Roman officials to be there, John is stressing that he was essentially there in God’s purpose, that he might receive God’s revelation.

(Pett)

God gives John a remarkable chance to behold Jesus.

He gives him a vision.

And he does this not just for John but for the seven churches of Asia and for us.

In verse 10 John says that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day.

That means that on one of his Sunday's on the island he was deeply in tune with the Spirit of God.

So much so that suddenly (v.

10) he "heard behind [him] a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet."

(Piper)

The voice says in v. 11, "“Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches....”

The vision John is about to get is meant not just for him but for us as well.

And the point of writing it down is to transmit to us the same kind of experience of seeing Jesus that he had.

Jesus does not intend to come to each of the seven churches the way he came to John.

He could have appeared to each congregation with this same vision.

But he doesn't.

He appears to John and says, "Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches."

John gets the vision.

We get the book.

But this is not because Christ wants to be distant and impersonal with his churches.

It is because he wants to come to us in and through his Word.

He wants us to seek him in his Word, and know him by his Word, and gaze upon him steadily through his Word.

And when we do, the Lord stands forth from his Word in ways beyond the merely rational and intellectual possibilities of reading.

The primary way of gazing on Christ today is through his Word.

Unless we seek Him in His Word, we will not find Him.

We will not be seeing Him, being shaped and molded by Him in, by, and through it: 2 Timothy 3:16-17

For us to see Jesus this next year, to keep our focus upon Him, we must be continually in His Word.

Bible Reading calendars.....

B. The Description of Christ Revelation 1:11-16

We are told that John turned around to see where the voice had come from.

He saw seven golden lampstands.

But this does not hold his attention because there is something greater.

It isn’t the church itself, represented in the candlesticks that holds his attention, it is this sight of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He sees him in the very midst, and it is the vision of the glorified Savior that holds him fascinated.

This book is first and foremost a revelation of the glory of Christ.

It sets before us in almost every chapter the majesty of Christ, as the one in whom all of human history is to find its meaning and at last its consummation.

(Thomas)

John looks at his glorious Lord and the first thing that strikes John is the humanness of the exalted Saviour.

It is the same Christ he knew in His earthly ministry, and this Christ is still human, but he is now exalted.

He is clothed with a regal garment, a golden sash.

His head and his hair are white like wool as white as snow.

(Thomas)

The significance of this is found in Daniel 7 .

There we see the Son of Man.

He is also the Ancient of Days and the Great and Almighty God.

John sees this same vision as Daniel.

He acknowledges the Son of Man to be the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has that very mark of deity and divine splendor that had belonged in the Old Testament to God the Father.

So we are seeing first of all this risen Lord, that he is still human, but we are told this also that he has an exalted, transformed, transfigured humanity.

We mus remember this, that although the Lord Christ is today an exalted and risen Savior, yet that exaltation has not destroyed his humanness.

The man Christ Jesus has still a human body and psychology but He has inherited the earth.

He has undergone the most sublime transfiguration – not only his body, but his soul and spirit too.

He is not today a ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’.

He remembers those days when his heart was broken and weariness set-in, when he experienced renunciation and abandonment by the Father.

That memory is the stuff of his compassion, but God has wiped away every tear from his eye.

All that is gone; his body has been transformed.

The clarity of his vision has been increased, and out of his life sorrow and sighing have fled away.

And if you are in Christ Jesus this morning, that is what awaits you as well!

John and the churches are being shown this for a reason.

All around him there is imprisonment, captivity, persecution and death.

The world is dealing with the church as it dealt with the church’s Lord, and John is shown for his own encouragement and comfort, where the Lord’s own pilgrimage has wound-up, and he is given the assurance that such is the glory which the church will one day itself know in accordance with the Lord’s own prayer that where he is there they may be also.

Their bodies undergo the same transformation; their souls experiencing the same comfort.

They sit with him as partakers in his eminence and of his sovereignty.

Where is this exalted Lord?

He is surrounded on all sides by the seven golden candlesticks.

In other words we are told that these represent the Christian church and that therefore the risen Christ is in the midst of his church.

He is shown in all his eminence and all his exalted glory, and yet he is equally the one who is in the very midst of his church on earth.

We have the promise that where two or three gather in his name he is there and we ourselves know that promise fulfilled today.

We are to know that he is present not because we have certain feelings or that there is some kind of atmosphere in a meeting created by lights, candles or light streaming in through stained glass windows, mood music playing, nor ecstatic experience.

Not by any of that human engineering do we know that Christ is in a certain place.

Suppose today that our spirits felt utterly dejected and this building felt chilly (admittedly, this may be difficult on a day like today!) – like a spiritual icebox.