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A literary approach to Revelation Chapter 1
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Come on in and grab a seat. And I know we are super packed this morning. And so we'll be setting out some rows of chairs out by the coffee as you're making your way in so that people can get a seat. And I know what's going on. I know that it's just the Super Bowl is tonight, and so a lot of you that are normally at the evening service are here at church so you can watch the football game.
Speaker 1:But I appreciate that. Thank you for coming. I, however, will be here serving Jesus during the game while the Seahawks beat the Patriots. So there you go. Come on in.
Speaker 1:Last week, we wrapped up our series Sex and Money for another year. But please keep in mind that three weeks was never meant to be anything like a systematic approach to human sexuality, or the economics of neighborhood for that matter. And so we will continue the conversation in the weeks, and the months, and the years that have come together as Commons Church. But in the short term, we are putting together a supplemental podcast. Joel and I are putting that together this week, and so that will be up on the website to directly respond to all of the questions and comments that came in during that series.
Speaker 1:So that, you can keep your eyes open for. Today though, we start Revelation. But before we dive into this complex and often misunderstood text, let me reacquaint you with a classic of speculative exegesis from the YouTubes. I give you double rainbow.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh my god. Look at that. It's starting to even look like a triple rainbow.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. It's full on. Double rainbow all the way across the sky. What does this mean? Oh, it's so bright.
Speaker 2:It's so bright and vivid. What does this mean?
Speaker 1:It's so bright and vivid. What does it all mean? And if that doesn't work as an introduction to the book of Revelation, I don't know what does. Because let's be honest here. The Revelation of John, as it's often called, is paradoxically one of the most obsessed over and ignored books in the entire canon.
Speaker 1:The Revelation here is is ignored for just these same reasons that our rainbow viewing friend has described. It is so incredibly vivid and bright, full of fantastic images to rival Star Wars. If you are looking for action packed joy ride through the cosmos, Revelation is your book. And yet, at the same time for most of us, the meaning seems almost incomprehensibly hid behind metaphor and prophecy and cultural and general weirdness. And so we are often left to either obsess or ignore.
Speaker 1:And depending on your background, my guess is you fit comfortably into one of those two categories. And I get that. But my premise for doing what I do, a lot of my whole shtick as a teacher and a pastor, is about inviting us into the idea that the scriptures are fascinating. In fact, the conviction behind this community is that not only can you have an intellectually honest and spiritually passionate conversation about Jesus, but that if you do, people will actually be interested in participating in that conversation. And that's what we do here.
Speaker 1:We're really not all that flashy. We're not particularly sexy, but we are intellectually engaged, and we are spiritually passionate, and I think that's meaningful. And so the next question is then, why revelation? I mean, how does a book about a red dragon, a lamb covered with seven horns and seven eyes, a beast from out of the sea, a battle of Armageddon have anything to do with spiritually passionate, let alone intellectually honest lives, for that matter? Well, there's at least a couple reasons that I wanna tackle revelation this spring.
Speaker 1:And the first is very simply this, I've never done it before. I've taught bits and pieces of this book over the years, but I have never had an extended opportunity to go section by section through the entire letter. I've read it. I've studied it. I've developed my own approach to it, but I haven't had a chance to teach through it this way, and I thought that would be fun.
Speaker 1:So that's the first reason I wanted to do it. But the second reason is because you wanted to do it. So you can't blame this all on me. A lot of us have been asking for a while now that we talk about revelation. And maybe that stems from a desire to talk about the future and the end times and the battle of Armageddon.
Speaker 1:It may stem from a desire to disarm all the talk of the future and the end times in the battle of Armageddon. No more left behind. Even Nicolas Cage can't draw you back in again. Fair enough. But either way, this is a book that people are fascinated by, if not a little scared by.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people have been asking me for a while that we, take a look at this. What do we do with the red dragon? Should we be looking for the mark of the beast in our world today? Or does this book have something, anything to say to us about life and faith? So that's the second reason.
Speaker 1:The third reason is this, very simply, it's in the bible. And I know that might sound a little trite, but honestly, if we're going to identify ourselves as a community shaped by the scriptures, then we can't always and forever stick to just the stuff that we like or that we find easy or that we already tend to understand. Growth is about stretching ourselves. And this book, strange as it may be, is part of the message that God has given us. So there's a reason that every September, we work and put together the journal project.
Speaker 1:There's a reason that every year you will find an extended series from the old testament, a new testament letter that happens to be revelation this year, and a series directly from the words of Jesus. We're gonna do that, just after Easter this year. That's because we want to have a well balanced diet of scripture across a year. It can't all be fruity pebbles. We gotta force ourselves to have some oatmeal from time to time.
Speaker 1:And Revelation perhaps is that oatmeal and hopefully some of us will enjoy it as we go. And that leads me to the last reason for wanting to spend some time in the book of Revelation this spring. And that's because this book does have something to say to us. It was written to a community under pressure. Economic pressure, social pressure, political pressure, even religious pressure.
Speaker 1:And to some of the people reading this letter, they were acutely aware of all of those pressures around them. They saw what was happening in their world, and they were fighting to hold on to their imagination of what was good despite the weight to conform to the world around them. There were others though who didn't feel the weight. Things were going well. Things were good.
Speaker 1:They didn't see it. They didn't feel it. And they didn't realize the ways in which they were being shaped by a story other than the story of Jesus. And so what John does is he writes and he uses images. He uses metaphors.
Speaker 1:He uses these fantastical representations of what is in order to help his people see their world in a new way. And I know that sounds strange. I mean, nothing is clear in Revelation. What do we do with the red dragon? But my hope is that as we take these next eight weeks and we explore these images and we put them into context and we start to see what John is doing and we immerse our self in his world, we will come to realize that we actually have far more in common with the Christians of the Roman Empire than we perhaps ever thought possible.
Speaker 1:So first, let's pray. And we'll ask God for his help on this journey. Journey. But then this weekend, we're gonna begin with an introduction to the apocalypse of John. God, we come today, perhaps prejudiced to what you might speak.
Speaker 1:Maybe we have been too intimidated to crack this book and see what it even says. Too scared by childhood stories of Armageddon and rapture, wars and battles to even want to make sense of this text. But we pray that you might calm our anxieties and remind us that everything in your word speaks to us of your grace and your love. Perhaps we come full of speculation. Dates and times, nations and adversaries looking for you everywhere in the news and yet never having taken the time to slow down and see what you might speak to us in the midst of your text.
Speaker 1:We pray that you would slow us down enough to hear your spirit speaking to our hearts even now. Not about tomorrow, not about then, but about right now. About today, about how we might follow you better in the midst of our world. Perhaps, we come to this conversation confused about why you would hide your message behind these crazy images. Metaphors that seem indecipherable.
Speaker 1:And we have come to think that you are hiding something from us. Maybe that you are hiding from us. That you're playing games with us. And so we ask that you would open our eyes to see that you are never hidden. That you are never hiding.
Speaker 1:That you are only ever always standing waiting for us to turn to you. And so when it comes to a text like Revelation, we ask that you would help us do the work to understand the then so that we could learn to see you more clearly in the now. But we thank you that we do not do this alone. And as we read and as we speak, we invite your spirit to be present to each of us in our hearts teaching. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. I have a whiteboard up here. I may or may not use it. I mean, what's revelation without a white whiteboard.
Speaker 1:Right? But the goal today is really just to work through couple of verses in the introduction of this book. Because largely, we're gonna be leaving the text of revelation for the upcoming weeks. We have seven more weeks after this to work our way through the story. Today though is all about putting some basic guidelines in place when it comes to reading apocalyptic literature and Revelation Revelation in specific.
Speaker 1:So some rails, if you will, that are gonna help us through this series. But before we get to that, what I wanna do is read the first six verses of Revelation. And we don't do this often, but why don't you stand with me as I read this? The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw.
Speaker 1:That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near. John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve his God and father. To him be glory and power forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Amen. Revelation one one to six. You can have a seat. Now, we will find our way back to these words as we close this morning. But first, we need to spend most of our time today setting up some guidelines when it comes to reading Revelation.
Speaker 1:And for that, we need to start at the start. Because the very first word of the book of Revelation is the Greek word apokalupsis. And understanding exactly what an apokalupsis is and isn't is absolutely essential to reading Revelation responsibly. Because an apokalupsis in Greek is not the same thing as an apocalypse in English. Now they come from the same word.
Speaker 1:English comes from this. In fact, the reason that the English word apocalypse is not used when we translate apocalypsis though, is because apocalypse has been associated with all kinds of climaxes and catastrophes and terrible things happening in the world. Things like the x men. The next x men movie is going to be called apocalypse and it stars this guy on the screen right now. And to be fair, he kind of looks like someone who could be right out of the book of revelation.
Speaker 1:But the Greek word, apokalupsis, doesn't mean end of the world. It doesn't mean catastrophe or cataclysm. Next time you hear someone talking about the apocalypse, say them, no. Wrong word. Stop using that.
Speaker 1:So simply meant uncovering or revealing. Hence, the English translation revelation. So that moment in a traditional wedding, when the groom lifts the veil of the bride uncovering her face, that is very literally one of the uses for the verb in Greek, to uncover. So next time you're at a wedding and the bride wears a veil, just before it's lifted, you can lean to the person beside you and say, are you ready for the apocalypse? Now don't say it too loud.
Speaker 1:You don't want to offend anyone who overhears, but etymologically, you will be correct. In fact, the full definition of apokalupsis is to make fully known or clear. So if you had a window with the curtain drawn, and you went over and you pulled back the curtain, that is an apokalupsis. If you have a door and it's closed and you come over and you open the door, this is an apocalypsis. If you have a very complex idea or concept and someone explains it to you in a way that brings new clarity and understanding, this also is an.
Speaker 1:So the first thing we have to get straight before we even begin Revelation is that John is not trying to hide anything from us. Revelation is not a code. It's not a mystery. It's not a test. That's not the point.
Speaker 1:Revelation is a revealing. John is showing us. He's helping us to see. He's pulling back the blinds to help us see the world in a new way. And so it's important that before we begin to try to read this letter, we start with the conviction that God is showing us something here, not hiding something from us here.
Speaker 1:Because that will influence the posture with which we read and interact with the images that are to come. Now that said, the next logical question is, if this is a revealing, then why all the bizarre images? Then why not come out and simply say what you want to say? Why make your revealing as obfuscated as revelation seems to be? I wanna give you two reasons for that to keep in mind as we go forward in this series.
Speaker 1:And the first one is actually pretty simple to understand once you compare it to a contemporary context. You see an was more than just a word that meant revealing. It was an entire genre of literature that worked within an understood set of rules. So if I opened a book and I read once upon a time, your mindset would immediately shift into a certain perspective. And that perspective would prepare you for the story I'm about to tell.
Speaker 1:Now, if a good storyteller, I could stay within the confines of the genre of fairy tale, and I could weave a tale that brought you deeper and deeper into your expectation once upon a time. There's always a certain beauty and satisfaction in that. Think beauty and the beast. Right? Or I could play with the conventions.
Speaker 1:I could say, once upon a time, but then I could unfold a tale designed to undermine the premise of a fairy tale and play with your expectations. Think Shrek. And that's a good story too. But either way, the story works and the images make sense within the rules of the genre. So beauty and the beast doesn't work if you're expecting a western.
Speaker 1:If you're ready to hear about cowboys and all of a sudden a beast and a princess show up, you're confused. It doesn't make sense. But in the context of a fairy tale, a beast and a princess, those same images make perfect sense to you. Think of it this way. If I were to tell you a story about an enormous elephant with tusks of ivory covered in stars, who battled a bruised donkey hands wrapped in leather wearing strips of red and white, and you were expecting a fairy tale, you might interpret it one way.
Speaker 1:Perhaps you're picturing Babar in your head. Do you remember him? No? Okay. But if you're reading a newspaper and you came across that same description in the editorials, you would interpret it a very different way.
Speaker 1:You just have to know that the meaning of the images is tied up in the context. So here, you have to know that in a political conversation, an elephant represents the Republican Party in the states, states, and a donkey represents the Democratic Party in the states. Now the artist doesn't tell you what the images represent. He doesn't need to. In fact, if she did, it would ruin the effect.
Speaker 1:That's the point. Because we all know the rules, and so we understand what's happening here. Imagine someone says to you that the bulls chewed up the bears. If they are talking about a zoo, that means one thing. Some kind of horrific escape story.
Speaker 1:If they're talking about a football game, that means something else. Something like a a lopsided victory by one team. But if they're talking about the stock market, it would mean something completely different again. It
Speaker 2:would
Speaker 1:mean that those who bet on a positive upswing in the markets are doing much better than those who bet on a downslide or a crash. Based on the context though, based on the rules of the genre of the conversation we're talking about, we understand what we're saying without me needing to explain the images to you. A lot of that is what John is doing in this letter. It's actually not meant to be confusing. It's simply a function of the fact that we don't implicitly know the rules he's using.
Speaker 1:We don't live in his culture. We're not used to his metaphors. We're not used to his images, but they do mean something to his audience. And so we're gonna spend a lot of time in this series talking about those rules. Rules.
Speaker 1:And so that we can understand the word pictures that come from political imagery in Rome and the images that come from economic imagery in empire, and then finally, religious imagery that is drawn from the Hebrew scriptures. But that's not the whole story with the images either. Because we could still ask this. Well, why don't political artists, instead of drawing cartoons, why don't they just write editorials? I mean, why doesn't John just talk about what he wants to talk about?
Speaker 1:Sure. There's rules. We understand it. But why not just say it straight out? Why use metaphors?
Speaker 1:And so even once we understand the rules, this is a valid question. And this one is a little bit harder to articulate. But if you have ever appreciated the, artwork of, artists like Pablo Picasso, you'll have some idea of what I think John is doing in this, revelation. You see, Picasso was famous for being a very brilliant artist around the early twentieth century. He was classically trained and painted in a number of different styles.
Speaker 1:So you probably know some of his more outlandish images. But during his blue period, he painted some very striking, but nonetheless, very traditionally recognizable works. But then, in the period leading up to the first great war, he started experimenting with, what ended up being called cubism. And so Picasso and others started painting portraits where all the right features were there, but it was as if they had been taken apart and then put back together in strange and bizarre ways. He would paint a face as if it was from one angle and then paint another part from another angle.
Speaker 1:But he would combine the elements to create something that was unsettling and at the same time kind of beautiful all at the same time. And what he was trying to do was find a way to express the idea of a person he was painting. To capture the essence of his subject in a way that even looking directly at them couldn't capture. Think of Van Gogh's Starry Night. I mean, have you ever gone outside on a beautiful starry night and seen anything remotely like this in the sky?
Speaker 1:Now, in one sense, your answer is, of course not. I mean, the real world doesn't look like that at all. And yet at the same time, the answer is also probably somehow, absolutely, I've seen that before. Art, whether it is a painting or a sculpture or a torrent of words that comes tumbling out from the mouth of a poet. What it does is it helps us to see our world in ways that the factual and the historical and the concrete can't ever quite completely communicate.
Speaker 1:And so when Revelation says that the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, We will not be talking about how US air force transport planes will be flying out of Israel to safely move the Jews into the desert while the battle of Armageddon is fought. And when revelation says that locusts as powerful as horses with tails like scorpions, with crowns of gold in the faces of men appear, we will not be talking about Apache helicopters and Stinger missiles. And that's not because the images in Revelation are literally about dragons and beasts and very, very scary grasshoppers. It's because the images aren't designed as descriptions of appearances. They're designed as descriptions of essence.
Speaker 1:What is the essence of what John wants to speak about? What does it look like when we get past the appearance and the facade on the outside? What does it really look like when you look at evil or goodness or truth or beauty? See, John wants to tell us that everything is not what we think it is. He wants wants to say that the empire is not the shining light his readers imagine it is.
Speaker 1:He wants to tell us that persecution and pressure are not a sign of being abandoned by God. They are simply and only ever the last gasps of evil that tries to hold on to what it has already lost. But in the midst of their struggle, in the midst of their confusion, John knows that his message is going to have a tough time getting through to people. And so instead, he tells stories. And he turns things upside down.
Speaker 1:And he takes the world apart. And he puts it back together in ways that we see it for what it really is. In ways that force us to confront our assumptions and see the world in a completely new way. And he does this all in pursuit of answering the central question of the apocalyptic genre of literature. And that was the question of evil.
Speaker 1:You see, God is in control, what is going on in the world? Or why do bad things happen to good people? Why do the evil seem to prosper? Why do the good seem to suffer? Why, if we trust in God, are we still suffering?
Speaker 1:God, And for this, we need to understand two essential ways of viewing history. And these are what we call the prophetic and the apocalyptic. So I'm gonna draw a little bit here. One side, this is the prophetic world. This is the apocalyptic world.
Speaker 1:Now, the prophetic world view is the one that dominated most of the Hebrew scriptures. And by prophetic, I mean absolutely nothing to do with fortune telling and future seeing. What I mean is the fundamental worldview that says this, God is in control. God has a plan. Our job is to line up with that plan.
Speaker 1:And if we do, if we do the right things, then things will get better and God will bless us. And that's essentially what the prophets keep saying over and over and over again in the Hebrew scriptures. If we do the right thing, things will get better. It's not going well. It's probably because you've oppressed the foreigners, or you're forgetting the widows or you're getting too caught up in religious ceremony and neglecting the greater call to justice and mercy and love.
Speaker 1:Turn that around, the prophets say, and things will turn around for you. That's what the prophets do. They call out the powerful on their sin, and they call the people to change. What's interesting about the prophets though is the scope to which they apply this worldview. Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish commentator, once said that it was as if the words of the prophets gushed forth from the heart of God seeking entrance to the heart of men.
Speaker 1:But he said this because he saw in the prophets not just a concern for their local context, even though they were political and social reformers, but he saw a growing concern for the nations, but then even the cosmos expanding out in concentric circles when he read the prophets. So let me show you what I'm talking about just by looking at the prophet Isaiah. At the center is a concern for the people of Israel. Isaiah one says this, your rulers are rebels. Your part they partner with thieves.
Speaker 1:They all love bribes and they chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless. The widow's case does not come before them. So Isaiah says that the powerless are being ignored and the powerful are enriching themselves. Therefore, God is not interested in your worship or your praise.
Speaker 1:He says, when you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. So what does God want? He wants you to learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. So this is all from Isaiah one, and this is all about Israel.
Speaker 1:He challenges his people, his tribe, his nation to do right, and he promises that if they do, God will bless them. But then he expands outward. See, at the time of Isaiah, Assyria, and then later Babylon were the dominant power in the world. And they marched through much of ancient Palestine as we know it, conquering the nations including both the northern and the southern kingdoms of Israel. And they were terrible.
Speaker 1:They took slaves, they broke up families and exiled them to different parts of the kingdom, they conquered and they crushed nations under their war machines. But Isaiah says that this violence will ultimately be their undoing. So after he talks to the nation of Israel, this is what he says in chapter 13. Listen, a noise on the mountains like that of a great multitude, an uproar among the kingdoms like nations massing together. So the nations have come to think they are powerful enough to fight against God.
Speaker 1:But Isaiah says, on the day of the Lord, all hands will go limp. Every heart will melt with fear. Terror will seize them. Pain and anguish will grip them. They will writhe like a woman in labor, and they will look aghast at each other.
Speaker 1:But it is not all bad for the nations in Isaiah because he also says that when the day of the Lord comes, they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore. So there's a confrontation between the nations and God. But at the end of it, everyone is blessed, everyone does the right thing, and peace comes to the nation. But before Isaiah is done, he leaves Israel, he leaves Azaria and Babylon behind, and he now he starts to talk about the earth.
Speaker 1:He writes this, death expands its jaws, opening wide its mouth. The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered, but God will eventually swallow up death forever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away tears from all faces. He remove his people's disgrace from all the earth the Lord has spoken. There is this final concentric circle that deals with the cosmos.
Speaker 1:The time at which everything will be brought to right. So we go from Israel to the nations to the cosmos to the point where even death itself is conquered by God, but the view is that God is slowly working with humanity through history to bring the world to where he wants it to be. That is the prophetic worldview. But here's the question. What happens when after hundreds of years, when after generations of Jews, the nation of Israel is still subject to foreign powers.
Speaker 1:You know, it's one thing to say, oh, we got conquered, but if we are righteous, God will bless us. Fine. What now when it's been five hundred years and you haven't controlled your own fate? It was Assyria, and then Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, and now Rome. This is where the apocalyptic worldview was born.
Speaker 1:Because people started to wonder, can it really be that we just haven't been good enough for God to bless us for the last five hundred years? Or is it maybe that God is testing us? And so the apocalyptic worldview flipped the story on its head. And what it said is this, that instead of blessing being a sign that God is happy with us and pain being a sign that he's angry with us, maybe pain is the result of being faithful in a broken world. And wealth is sign of giving in to what is evil and opposed to God.
Speaker 1:So the world is getting worse and worse, and therefore, the more righteous we are, the more we will suffer in that world. So where the prophetic view, we saw God in complete control working through history, the apocalyptic worldview saw history as a battle being waged between good and evil. With things getting worse and worse and worse until eventually God who was waiting sidelines would swoop in at the last minute and save the day and show his power. And according to many contemporary interpretations of revelation, this is exactly what John sees unfolding in history. A world that's getting worse and worse and worse, but eventually God will come in, save the day, and make things right.
Speaker 1:The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Our job is simply to hold on until God finally rescues us. What others have noticed, however, in reading revelation closely, is that revelation seems to follow a pattern of repeating itself, Telling the same story over and over again with a larger and larger scope of salvation from the church to the nations to the very nature of evil. This insight goes back to a man named Saint Victorinus in the third century. Victorinus looked at this and he saw, you know what?
Speaker 1:The apocalyptic, writings of John looks a lot like this in Isaiah. What others have noticed in reading Revelation closely, however, is that Revelation seems to follow a pattern of building to climactic moments. Seven bulls, seven scrolls, seven trumpets, but only at the last minute, just before the climax, all the drama seems to fall apart. And the battle never happens. The seventh scroll, the seventh trumpet, nothing's there.
Speaker 1:God is just in power. And it seems like evil is ready to oppose God, but when the time comes, God has shown over and over again to have been always in control completely all the way along throughout the story. From the opening verse we read earlier today, grace and peace from Christ Jesus, the firstborn from the dead and the present ruler of the kings of the earth. Not one day. Not in the second coming.
Speaker 1:He is the ruler of the kings of the earth right now. And so this insight goes back to theologians like Ernst Kaeseman and Elizabeth Schusler Fiorenza. And they realized that the brilliance of John's is that while he plays within the rules of the apocalyptic genre, ultimately, what John is showing us is something more like a prophetic imagination of the world. A world where there is no such thing as a battle between good and evil because evil will ultimately defeat itself. A world where there is no such thing as God who sits on the sidelines watching for God is deeply present in every moment of this book.
Speaker 1:A world where there is no need to fear those who oppose God. For those who oppose God are already defanged and disarmed by the sacrifice of the lamb. And what John does is he does this by telling us the exact same story three times over just like any good prophet of the Hebrew scriptures. First, it's at the level of the church as they live their faith out under the empire. That's the seven letters to the seven churches.
Speaker 1:We'll look at that next week. Next, he looks at the level of politics and nations as we watch Rome grasp for power and control. Here, we'll look at the throne and the lamb, the seven scrolls, and the seven trumpets, cycle two. And then finally, John speaks about the level of the cosmos as we watch evil implode on itself. And here we'll look at the woman drunk on the blood of the saints, the red dragon, and the beasts that accompany him so that finally we can land on the image of the new heaven and the new earth as the new city Jerusalem finally and fully opens her doors to the nations never to be shut again.
Speaker 1:Because this book is the apocalypsis of Jesus. That's the name of the book. It's not revelations. It's not even just revelation. It's certainly not the revelation of John.
Speaker 1:John names the book, Apocalipsis Iesu Christu, the revealing of Christ Jesus. That's what the book is about. So, yes, we will talk about the mark of the beast and we'll get to Armageddon. We'll meet the red dragon and the whore of Babylon. But everything we see in this book, every image, every story, every strange and bizarre personality we meet is pointing us to the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ who is in control of the world right now.
Speaker 1:So if you leave this series at the end of the next eight weeks, if you pick up this book and you read it and you put it down and your focus is somehow stuck on riddles or wars or antichrists and devils, then not only will I have failed to make my point in this series, but you will have completely missed the point in John's writing. Because he tells us in the opening phrase exactly what he's trying to do. And he is trying to reveal Jesus Christ to you. For this is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show his servants what must soon take place. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written.
Speaker 1:Grace and peace to you. From him who is and who was and who is to come, to him who loves us and has freed us from the sins of our blood, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. This is what the book is about. And so over the next seven weeks as we take these guidelines and we begin to walk our way through these images, these prophecies, these metaphors, and these word pictures, this is what we are looking for.
Speaker 1:Not wars and devils and battles and beasts. We are looking for the ways that Christ is revealed to us. Let's pray. God, help us as we begin a very complex book full of images that don't make sense in our world. To do the hard work of placing ourselves into the world to which this book was written.
Speaker 1:Help us to see all of the ways that it reveals who you are. Not just in the first century, not just in the context of pressure from Rome, but in the way it reveals who you are now in the present. Ruling and reigning and shaping your world into the kingdom that you want it to be. God help us as we study to engage our minds and our intellect, but more than that to engage our spirit with your spirit. To listen to how you would speak to us and to begin to live that out in ways that bring this vision to pass.
Speaker 1:Thank you for allowing us to partner and play a role in your story as you are a great and a gracious God. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. I wanna remind you that we have our AGM happening Tuesday night, 06:30 here in this room.
Speaker 1:It's open to members or non members. Everyone is welcome to come and be part of that conversation. And please, read through the opening chapters of the book of Revelation. We're gonna be looking at the letters to the seven churches next week, and so that'll give you some grounding for that. We'll end as we always do with this.
Speaker 1:Love God, love people, tell the story, have a great week, enjoy the Super Bowl, we'll see you back next Sunday. Thanks guys.
Speaker 3:This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.