Intro: Pastor Darren is back. Let's welcome back our lead pastor. We're starting an incredible series today, revelation, faithful witness in the chaos of empire. Let me pray for you, brother. Extend a hand as we welcome back our lead pastor.
Holy spirit, would you come and speak words of life through my brother? Thank you, lord, for the devotion he has to you in the quiet places that lead him to have a roar for us in this public gathering. We pray that the word of God would bear fruit in us and push back the darkness and claim more territory for king Jesus and his kingdom today. We pray in his holy name. Amen and amen.
Amen.
Darren: Thank you, pastor Ramin. 11 AM. How are we doing? Good morning. It's so good to be back.
I haven't preached for 5 weeks, and that does something to your soul. You know, it helps you remember why you're doing what you're doing. And I just wanna say I love this church. I love you guys. I love being a part of Garden.
I'm my wife and I are so grateful that we get to be a part of this community and we're excited to be here. And I'm gonna be preaching through this book. It's called Revelation. Have you heard of it? Yeah, it's a book that's fascinated the church for 1000 of years.
It's a church riddled with controversy and the truth is it's it's a book that has been misinterpreted for many years because of its vivid imagery, its apocalyptic themes, and its complex symbolism, that's caused this book throughout history to be obsessed over. And it's been used to push political agendas. It's used to frighten Christians into more severe form of devotion. It's been used as a book taught as a secret that needs to be decoded. It's a book that's used by cult followers and their leaders to convince their followers that they are the second coming of the Messiah.
And it's been a book that's read often times during world, crisis as a step by step guide for what's gonna happen. I'm so sorry. Do you mind there's a parent room. Would you mind just as I preach just to tell we love the little ones, but when they come back quieter, that'd be awesome. That'd be great.
Please don't be offended by that. I just wanna preach the word and it's gonna help me out. Thank you so much. We love the little kids here, so we bless them. If they're wanting to preach, just step out and then when they're done preaching, then come right back in.
So most Christians have been overly obsessed with this book or they've just neglected it altogether. And if I were to take a poll of this room, I bet many of us were frightened by the Tim LaHaye left behind series. Anyone here wanna confess their obsession with that? Yeah, I was definitely scared to death of that. And when I was single, I would always pray, Lord, just don't come back until I'm married.
And then, get that later. But the truth is this book is such a significant book and it's significant for most reasons, or I'm sorry, for a lot of reasons most Christians don't know about. Like if we were to just talk about it, these are the words that are often associated to the book. I'll just throw them up there so you can see them. The end, the rapture, the number 7, 4 horsemen, the antichrist, You know, 666 and all these words, but the truth is there are two famous words that we often associate with with the book of revelation that aren't in the book of revelation including the rapture and the antichrist.
So now you're like, oh, no. I know what's gonna happen over the next 26 weeks. Yep, you heard me. We're gonna teach this book for 26 weeks. I want you to be a disciple of Jesus who falls in love with the word of God.
I wanna teach you how to read the word of God. And and the truth is whether you read this as a symbolic guide for ethical living or as a literal roadmap for the end times as a doom doomsday prepper. Or you see this as a book offering a manual for encouragement. The testimony of revelation is that God is ultimately victorious. The theme, the the point of the book is very simple.
Jesus wins. So get used to it. But in all of the crisis of interpretation, I love what GK Chesterton says. He says this. He says, those Saint John the evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision.
He saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. So if you're new to church and you have no idea what I'm talking about, great. You have your blank canvas to learn what the book is about. Over the next several weeks, what I'm gonna do is present the different scholarly opinions. And the emphasis there is on scholarly.
Many of us don't realize what scholarship is needed to make an interpretation. In fact, many of us don't even know how to read scripture well or to interpret scripture. So in a couple of weeks, we're starting a mid week called how to read the bible. And we're gonna offer you tools as followers of Jesus to learn how to fish for yourself, how to read the scripture and interpret it and use the tools that you see here put into practice on the stage. Because Bill, pastor Bill and I and the people that we bring in to preach have a level of convictions around how to preach expository sermons and use exegetical process.
Those are big words for the scientific study of how to interpret this book. There's a way that we wanna teach you. And so my my job is not to scare you into the tactics of a Marvel comic nonsensical fantasy of prepping you for the end times and you buy my go bag and my rapture guide. Can make a lot of money doing that. This book is about discipleship.
This book is about Jesus. This book is about you being a faithful witness in the chaos of empire. And so we'll see that this is a special book for the time, for all of the times. But it's a unique book because it's a rare book with a promise inserted into it. And the promise is about blessing that comes to those who read it.
If you Would you just show me your Bibles if you brought on? I wanna make sure we're bringing these things here. That's right. Because who knows, maybe, you know, the mark of the beast is the iPhone. I don't know, but maybe you'll find out in a couple of weeks.
It isn't, but it also might be. So bring the physical copy. Revelation chapter 1. It says this. Let's read the opening opening prologue.
Verse 1, it says I'll wait till you get there. If you don't know where it is, go to the weights and tables measurements in the back of the book or the maps, and then go left. It's the last book of the new testament. And it says it's the revelation from 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.
That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of his prophecy And blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near. John goes on to write, John, to the 7 churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace to you from him who is and who was and who is to come from the 7 spirits before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the first born 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. Amen.
And he and has made us to be a kingdom and priests made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and father to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Blessed is the one who reads this. That word blessed is found all over the old and new testament. In the new testament, it's what Jesus uses when he starts his first sermon in the sermon on the mount, the beatitudes blessed or blessed are the poor in spirit.
This is an ancient near Eastern word, in the Greek for what is the purpose of life, what it means to have, a life devoted to God. The word is Makarios, which is translated to happy or blessed or a better translation is a flourishing life. The idea behind is a a holistic sense of well-being that includes moral, spiritual, and emotional fulfillment. It is what happens when you align your life to God and you experience, a deep abiding joy that comes from living with an alignment to God's will, not just experiencing external circumstances that bring you happiness. This idea of being blessed comes to those who read aloud the words and who hear the words and put into practice.
How does that go for a good study of a book? The promise of revelation is if you read it and take it to heart, you will have a fulfilled life. How's that? You good? Oftentimes we think of it as a scared life, one that we don't know what's gonna happen so we live with fear, but the promise is a blessed life from God.
So let's pray, let's pray that God would bless us on this series. Does that sound okay? 11, are you with me? Did I lose you already? You're about to get a Bible study of Bible studies, okay?
You're about to get revelation on the book of Revelation and you need to have ears to hear. And here's the thing, if you're new to our church, I think God will open your mind to receive what is about to be communicated. It's gonna feel like a lecture, you can handle it, okay? You don't need 3 points to make you a happy person. You need the word of God deeply planted in your soul.
Are you with me 11 AM? So Lord Jesus Christ, we know you're here. I'm reminded of the story in the gospels where you as the resurrected Christ come before your disciples and it says, you expanded their minds to understand scripture. That on the road to Emmaus, you you started with the prophets of the old testament and went all the way through the scriptures speaking about yourself. So Lord, would you enlighten us, bring us revelation.
Let us hear your words today in a fresh way that construct a fulfilled life in you. For those of us that have been, wishy washy, lukewarm, cultural Christians, may you just stir our hearts towards repentance, to knowing what it means to follow you today through your word in Jesus name, amen. So I'm gonna teach you how to read this book. Today is an intro. It's a survey on the book of Revelation.
You're gonna take lots of notes if you're a note taker. We're gonna provide these resources online. You should get into a house church because the house churches are gonna follow the sermons and they're gonna dive even deeper into the text. We want you to fall in love with scripture. So let's go into this, alright?
First of all, believe it or not, the work of revelation according to Eugene Peterson is that there's nothing new to be learned in this book that hasn't already been taught in the rest of scripture. We don't discover new truth. Rather, we are taught the already revealed truth of the scriptures in a new way. Here's what Eugene Peterson says. I do not read the revelation to get additional information about the life of faith in Christ.
I have read it all before in the law and profit in the Gospels and the epistles. Everything in Revelation can be found in the previous 65 books of the Bible. The Revelation adds nothing of substance to what we already know. The truth of the gospel is already complete revealed in Jesus Christ. There's nothing new to say on the subject, but there is a new way to say it.
I read revelation not to get more information, but to revive my imagination. Saint John uses words the way poets do. Recombining them in a fresh way in fresh way so that the old truth is freshly perceived. He takes truth that has been eroded to platitude by endless usage and sets it in, in motion before us in an animated impassioned dance of ideas. So revelation is not something that gives us a new ideas about Jesus.
It calls what has already been spoken about Jesus in the previous books. So the point of this series is to reignite your imagination for Jesus. Are you with me? So let's talk about this book. I'm gonna this is like practical Bible study moment.
You ready? I said, are you ready? I'm gonna make you repeat things. The word is revelation. Now the the word revelation is often misinterpreted.
It's not what you think it means. The word revelation in Greek is where we get the word apocalypse. But apocalypse is translated to unveiling. It's not what happens at the end, although it's about the end things, it's the unveiling. So when you read the revelation from Jesus Christ, it's the unveiling from Jesus Christ.
The point of this book is to teach you. I'm gonna say this over and over again, is that when you look out into the world as disciples, you must see what's behind the curtain. You have to see things through the lens of Jesus to really understand what's going on. You may not feel like you're winning when the world is crushing you with empire, but John wants your imagination to be lit on fire. As you remember, if you pull back the curtain of the cosmos, there's a throne, and on the throne is the lamb who was slain.
Victorious even as you march towards your death in the coliseum. Remain faithful even unto death because your king is the one true king. That's what revelation is about. Giving you eyes to see things are not as they seem. Unveiling the revelation from Jesus Christ.
So this book is about Jesus. This book is more of a manual or an instruction guide for, discipleship to the victorious lamb who is slain. It's a revelation of a provocative cultural political commentary. It's prophetic. It's foreshadowing things that are present and yet to come.
So we need to understand that this book, you need to hear it over and over again. It's about Jesus and the moral of the story is Jesus wins. Say, Jesus wins. Now to understand how to read it well, we need a lot of things in place and I'm gonna teach through these things in just a moment. We're gonna talk about historical cultural context.
We're gonna talk about genre and why the genre of this book matters. We're gonna talk about the structure and learn that structure provides meaning. And then we're gonna talk about themes, and this is gonna take 40 minutes, not 25. It's gonna take more time than you'll give me, but I'm gonna take it either way, and then we're gonna baptize people. Okay?
Does that sound okay? But let's start with historical cultural context. 1st, before we throw that up there, how many of you know context matters? Say context matters. Context matters.
Now close your eyes. Imagine it's the year 4024, 2000 years from now and some archaeologist discovers this dead language called English. He finds this piece of paper and a story on it. He's never heard anything like it. It says this, bottom of the 9th, angels down by 1 against the pirates.
2 outs, 2 strikes, runner on 3rd steals home for a tie. The pitcher throws a curve ball and the batter knocks it out of the park to tie it up or to win the game, but then a fight breaks out between the dugouts. If you read that as a historical commentary of some war, you would be massively in misinterpreting without the context of what's going on. Are you with me? Or if you think it's actually a prophecy, and now it's 4,024 and you're looking for what the meaning of angels and pirates are, and you're trying to discern the 2 outs and the 3 star, you don't understand what it means, but you're making all sorts of declarations not realizing it's a commentary on a sport called baseball.
Although it's inaccurate because the angels aren't gonna come back anytime soon, but anyways, maybe it's prophecy, maybe it's prophecy. You recognize that context matters, does it not? So the historical context and cultural context is really important for the reading of revelation. Revelation was most likely There's debate on this most likely written around 96 AD. It was written by the author, the apostle John who was also known as AKA the beloved.
Jesus is favorite according to the other work he did, the gospel of John. He also wrote the epistles 1st, 2nd, 3rd John. So this is his final book. He's now in his mid eighties, and he's in prison at on a prison island called Patmos. So he's exiled.
And what you need to know about him is he writes this strange and cryptic book because the way, because he's under the the watch or the the leadership of a Roman guard. So he's been exiled. Now what you need to know is how did John get to Patmos? Why isn't he killed like the other disciples? What you have to understand is at the time that this was written when when Paul I'm sorry, when John was on the prison Island of Patmos, that Island was for criminals and troublemakers.
4 years earlier in 92 AD, the emperor in 92 AD was Domitian. We'll talk about him in a second. He slaughtered 40,000 Christians in a couple of days. Now he's not the 1st emperor to kill the Christians. It actually started earlier around 67 AD with a famous emperor Nero, whose nickname was the beast by the way.
And he used to light Christians on fire in these cages to light up his garden parties at his home and he would dressed in clothing of lions and bite the prisoners before lighting them on fire. He was horrible and he was a madman and he waged war against the Christians and blame them for a fire that broke out in Rome in around 67 AD. Domitian was profoundly insecure. He was threatened of being overthrown. To compensate for his insecurity, he demanded that all of his subjects throughout the entire Roman Empire worshiped him and called him Lord and savior.
In the ruins of Ephesus, which is modern day Turkey today, you can still see the remains of a temple of Domitian. A place where Roman subjects were required to worship the emperor. During his lifetime, Domitian changed the name of the Roman Empire to the internal Empire. He changed his name from lord and savior to the everlasting king. And to worship him, you would go to a temple or before you enter the marketplace, you go to the statue of Domitian as part of the cult of the Roman empire.
You take a pinch of incense and you throw it on his likeness or on a fire as an offering to him as lord. And the question that we'll talk about in the future for the the first century Jews that would receive this letter from the apostle John as disciples of Jesus is, will you worship the emperor? Will you participate in the worship of the beast? Will you take on the mark if you take that incense and to go in to sell your goods, to trade the the the resources of your life to get the needs you have for your family or to sell the crop you have from your farm. You would have to take a purple dye or blue dye and show that you worship Caesar as Lord and take a mark on your hand or your forehead.
Will you participate in the worship of Caesar? Or will you remain unmarked and take on the mark of the lamb? Which the word for mark is the same word as seal in the New Testament. You are sealed with the Holy spirit. Are you marked by the beast?
Interesting. Right? We're gonna pull this stuff out. I know you're fascinated by it. I know you're questioning it, but a little bit of scholarship will pull out these ideas and let me just pause real quick because I see the looks.
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, I recognize that this book in particular, is deeply connected to a lot of people's hearts. It's like you're you're I'm beginning to pull on a thread that you've been given as a young man or woman that means something. It means a lot to you, and I'm gonna present some ideas that maybe you've never heard before. And I wanna invite you to have an open heart and an open mind. Well, all I'm doing is applying the same rules of interpretation of scripture that we've applied for all the other books of the Bible.
This book is apocalyptic, which we'll talk about in a minute. It requires a level of of, of interpretation different than poetry, different than historical narrative, different than the gospels or epistles. So I wanna invite you to be a learner and a lover of the scriptures to have an open mind about these things. I believe that the reason it's so sensitive is it has to do with the outcome you hope for. That we're heavily invested often in a political outcome that's different from the kingdom of God.
We're more invested in the American version of Jesus than the biblical version of Jesus, and that's offensive. And so what will, what what's required of you as a disciple actually in taking new ideas, the word for repentance is to change one's mind. So it will be repent and believe. Are you with me? Yes.
You alright? Yes. Oh, we're just getting warmed up. So John refuses to take the pinch of incense and cast it on the altar saying Caesar is lord. And as a result, the state sees him as a threat to the unity of the empire.
And so rather than killing him, they send him off on the island to die of old age, thinking that they would stop his influence. But John writes this letter to 7 churches. I really wanna emphasize this. In a moment where a lot of Christians, a lot of leaders of the of of Lot of leaders in the Christian church will disembody their leadership to try to influence the world on social media and podcasts. John was still committed to the local church.
John wrote to 7 local churches that he oversaw. His influence was was embodied with a group of people he knew. He knew their leaders. He knew the people. He was part of this community.
He's not writing to influence the masses. He's writing to encourage local church faithfulness. So when you read this book, it is about local church leadership. It's about local churches following Jesus. And he any letter that John would write from Patmos would be read by prison sensors.
They would censor what he would write. So he has to write in a style that would get the message across without the authorities understanding what he's actually saying. Are you with me? They just see it as the ramblings of an odd man writing a Lord of the Rings or Marvel comic. Okay.
So that's the history of the setting. We'll get into it as we go along. And here are the 7 local churches, by the way. These are actual places in modern day Turkey. These are the 7 churches listed in the book of Revelation.
So we'll talk about those over the next couple weeks. Now, say genre matters. So in the Bible, there's all different forms. There's poetry, historical narrative, wisdom, prophecy, gospels, epistles, apocalyptic. How many of you know that, the genre matters to which you're witnessing or reading?
If you're reading poetry, it's gonna look differently than reading narrative or history. Are you with me? Like for example, if you went to go see this movie, let's say around Christmas time because it's a Christmas movie, you would have a set of structure, a set of characters, action films are fast paced, explosive, dynamic camera angles, there's intensity, there's heroism, there's themes of good and evil revenge and justice, there's climactic battles and resolution. But if you go expecting an action movie instead you showed up the Shawshank, which is a classic drama with themes that are built in settings that are close-up shots, the focuses on emotions and the human experience. It's the structure is often driven by the development of a character and often it's focused on the internal rather than the external conflicts of one goes through.
That's a drama. But if you wanted to see Shawshank, but instead showed up to maybe this movie and had the expectations of Shawshank, you'd be disappointed, right? Or you wanted to go see a comedy, but instead showed up to this movie, which would be fantasy and magic, and you would see a different There is a different formula for that. And if you're on a date going to Lord of Rings, you wouldn't have this kind of film experience, right? You if you wanna the genre of what you're watching, of what you're reading matters.
It has a level of expectations built into it. So the genre of revelation, one author says, scholar says, as an apocalypse, it reveals what must soon take place. As a prophecy, it testifies to the word of God in Jesus Christ. As a letter, it addresses 7 churches in the Roman province of Asia. So it's 3 different genres in one.
It's apocalyptic, it's prophetic, and it's an epistle or letter. So when we read revelation, we have to recognize it's all three of those at the same time. So all three of those have certain structures, themes, and expectations in interpretation. Most of us in the church don't have a clue what apocalyptic is or prophecy for that matter. We get epistle, but the other 2 were quite confused about.
Are you with me on this? So let's talk about each of those things. So in the genre, let's talk about the 3 different things we're gonna talk about. 1st, it's primarily an epistle. It's a letter to 7 churches.
So why is that important? Well the point is that revelation is written by a specific person to specific persons living in specific cities at a specific time in history to meet specific needs. This means we must take the specific historical context seriously to rightly understand the message of revelation. John is a pastor writing pastoral letters to a group of people he's pastoring. So when we jump into the future, sections of this book, we need to have that that understanding that this would have been received by a group of people who would have understood the message.
I know that that's a lot of language for you right now, and I get I know that you get it. But let me say this, if that interests you, the 4 week course on how to read the Bible is gonna be how do you develop and how do you learn to develop that hermeneutic, that way of interpreting scripture. So for us, we say the Bible, the the the, the anchoring way The the way we anchor the interpretation of the Bible is by the author's intent, right? So what did the author intended to mean based on who was receiving the the letter or the work the first time based on the people receiving it. We don't start with what I think it means today.
I'm not basing my teaching on what I think it means today. I start with a blank canvas going, this is written by a dude to a group of people and a specific time for a specific purpose. I wanna do my best when telling you thus says the Lord that that's actually what thus the Lord says. Does that make sense? Not really.
You're talking Doctor. Seuss, it's okay. Come to the class. The second genre is apocalyptic. Now stay with me in this.
This is so important. Apocalyptic literature enabled hope and resistance by revealing the truth about and here it is, unseen present realities. So we're gonna have themes of God, of heaven and hell, about unknown future realities, about judgment and salvation. Now the time John wrote revelation, a 100 years before him and a 100 years after him, we have Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. It was a popular genre like Marvel Comic Movies are today, like romantic comedies are today, like in the early 2000 reality TV shows were popular back then, like the friends sitcom was popular back then for 10 seasons or ever many seasons.
I don't really know. My wife puts it on the background, I fall asleep, but my point is there are these genres of styles that were very popular outside of the biblical text that we know about because of history and archaeology, that we can pull the themes of apocalyptic literature out of. And so when you approach it, it's not it's it might be rare to the biblical canon of scripture, but it's not rare to the time. Does that make sense? So early apo apocalyptic works that are found in the scripture include the book of Daniel, parts of Daniel.
Parts of Daniel are historical and parts of Daniel are apocalyptic. Just like Isaiah, parts of Isaiah is is historical and apocalyptic. Ezekiel, Zechariah, Mark chapter 13 is so different than the rest of the book of Mark. Why? Because scholars call it little apocalypse.
Matthew chapter 24, have you ever read Matthew 24? You're like, what the heck is going on in Matthew 24? It's apocalyptic. It's written in a style of genre that communicates things in a unique way. We have to read it intentionally.
Are you with me? You sure? Am I offending you? Great. So a couple of overview for this genre, we're gonna talk about it as we come across it in the text, okay?
Apocalyptic literature has several unique features. For example, in the Bible and outside of the Bible, apocalyptic literature often has animals that represent people. So lamb or dragon or beast. Historical events in apocalyptic literature often are referenced as natural disasters, earthquakes and floods. Colors and numbers have unique meanings.
They should not be taken literal. Okay. I must have to set this aside. When you're reading apocalyptic literature, numbers and colors are not literal. They're conveying symbolic imagery.
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks. It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Is she the literal sun? No. It's Shakespeare.
You're welcome. So these are some of the the features. So 7 is the symbol in the Jewish mindset, consciousness of fullness. It's divine number. It's the number of completion or perfection.
6 is the number of of imperfection. It's a number of it's it's not quite complete. And the word The number 666 will be like in the same with that 777 will represent the complete of the complete. 666 will be a symbol of the incompletes. Complete, incomplete.
Like 1224144 talks about the fullness of God's people. 1000 will talk about large multitudes. I'll get into it as we go, but my point is apocalyptic seeks to pull back the curtain so that you know as a reader, things aren't as they seem. Something else is going on behind the scenes. So your purpose in the writing is to get you to have an imagination that gets you to see behind the scenes of what's happening.
You gotta see behind it. It's like when my son was growing up, I think it was 2019 or 2020, I don't remember. Lakers won the finals and we were watching it live and he was exposed to advertisements for the first time cause he had streaming platforms which had no advertisements. And he he would tell me, I really like those little movies in between the game. And I was like, Ezra, those are ads.
And he's like, what are those? I'm like, they're selling you something. I'm like, it's actually important. I want you to see what they're selling you. You know?
So there's this one and it was like a Sony PlayStation, but it was like this journey of a space odyssey. He saw it as a sci fi adventure. And I was like, I need you to see that you're gonna be seeing images as you grow up, and they're not showing you the image. They're trying to sell you something else, discontentment. They're trying to sell you on their products.
I need you to have an eye for what's being sold. So now even as we watch shows, he'll come to me like, I don't think we should watch this show. And I'm like, why? Because it's selling something that's against what we believe. I don't have time to get into it, but we're talking kids programs.
I'm I'm just gonna say it. Can we just cut the stream? Okay. There's a new version of one of the shows that was a very innocent show that began to press a form of ideological narratives onto the kids. Now it's not directly connected, but my son, my 10 year old was picking up on what my 7 year old was watching and saying, it reminds me a lot of this other thing happening in the world that we've been talking about and it's it's it's a metaphor for it.
So I don't think we should watch it. Yes. And he's right. Medical procedures for adults to become children or babies because the soul and boss baby was to become babies. I'm like that.
There's something off here. Do you see what's going on? Do you see what's happening behind the scenes? Are you guys good? Keep your eyes open.
Oh, I am. I just get warmed up. It's also prophecy. Wow. We're we need to I'm gonna speed this up.
Here we go. Prophecy 5 times in the book of John or, I'm sorry, 5 times in Revelation John or an angel calls this prophecy. Its purpose is to show you things which must shortly take place. The phrase is repeated over and over again, but at the end of the book and at the beginning of the book, in the biblical world, the word prophecy does not so much connote prediction as it does declaration. The heart of biblical prophecy is not look what is coming, but thus says the Lord.
Stay with me because you're gonna get wrecked on this one. This is not to say God does not enable some people to predict the future. No, but biblical prophecy is in the book of Revelation as a prophecy means that God is now revealing something that requires a response in this very moment, some new form of obedience to his will is required. So if you read the prophetic literature of the old testament, you get these prophecies where Isaiah, he's calling the people in the present to live what God spoke in Exodus and Deuteronomy in the present because they're off track. Otherwise, destruction will come.
The point isn't that destruction's coming, the point is to get your life in order now. Same with revelation. It's always a present response to a already spoken command about a coming doom. So it's apocalyptic, it's epistle, it's prophecy. Tell me, would you speak back to me structure matters?
The word I was looking for is repeat after me. The structure provides meaning. When you read a book of the Bible, you should learn to understand its structure because understanding the structure will provide meaning. The book of Mark structures his book for a Roman audience in a very symbolic way that leads to Romans chapter I'm sorry, Mark chapter 8 where Jesus confesses the messiah and the next 8 chapters of 16 chapters is basically the last week of Jesus' life. Why?
Because in the Roman mindset, how a general or a hero dies speaks about how he lives, so it's a slow telling of his death. John organizes it differently. His gospel has to do with I ams, has to do with 7 7 I ams, 7 miracles that he calls signs. He starts naming them in the beginning and then he hides them and you gotta figure them out as you go and it's far more poetic. It doesn't begin with the birth of Jesus.
It begins with the birth of creation because he was the logos. And so the storytelling is different than Luke, which has as a doctor, he's fascinated by the miracle story. So he tells all these healing stories of God doing things through Jesus and the power of the holy spirit. The structure provides meaning. Are you with me church?
So revelation has unique structure. This is gonna mess you up. Trust me. I know Okay, here we go. First of all, there are 404 verses in the book of revelation.
That's it 404. Out of 404 verses, there's o there's in between anywhere between 500 and depending how you count it, 800 references to the old testament, which goes to our first quote by Eugene Peterson, nothing new is being shared. Just the ideas of the past are being told in a way for a response today. So that's crazy. You're talking about hyperlinks out of the world in this book.
Like it's all these pop ups. Every time you read, it's like a 1,000 8 100 different references to the old testament. Now here's the key though. The key to understanding the book is in this word used 4 different times and it breaks up the book into 7 sections, and it's the word opened. John speaks of seeing something opened in 41, 119, 155, and 1911.
So when you read open, think of double clicking on the mouse. A new page pops up and it's a new vision within the larger vision of what's going on. So this becomes the structure or the outline. Now stay with me. The outline is this, it's a prologue followed by Jesus, the son of man speaking to the 7 churches, and then there's these windows that open up.
The first is the lamb unseals the scrolls. The second, and I want you to just see this one. Number 4 verses, chapter 11 verse 19 through 5, 154 is what we'll call the cosmic drama or the cosmic conflict. And then and then another window open and it's the bowls of wrath and the fall of Babylon, another window is open and the man on the horse leading up to the coming of the city of God and then it closes with the epilogue. What I'm trying to communicate, what you have to see, you gotta get this in your head, is revelation is not chronological.
Take a picture of this. Put it on your phone. Memorize it. Not chronological. So that window 11/19 that opens, chapter 12 describes what happened long before John was arrested in exile in Patmos.
Revelation 12:3-5 describes in apocalyptic language what occurred on the 1st Christmas Eve. So when we get to our Advent season, we're gonna teach you that yes, you should have the 3 wise men, you should have the shepherds in the field, and you should have a dragon hovering over the nativity scene waiting to devour a baby. Because that's what's happening behind the curtain. Some of you are like, when that happens, then the rest of revelation, and the tribulation, and the rapture will occur, and a literal millennia, the reign, all these things, because you've not been taught the structure of the book is not about what happens next, but what John sees next. So the question as you read revelation is not what happens next, but what did John see next?
That will help you along the way as you interpret. You with me? So one of the things we're gonna we're gonna so we're gonna have all these resources for you. I have, like, 15 commentaries if you wanna dive into this book, 15 scholarly commentaries. I have, we're not gonna sell Tim Lahaye books out here, but I will sell go bags for all of you on my substack page.
You can subscribe. Hit that subscribe button. Let's go. Just kidding. Jeez.
Just flip over the table. It's not a marketplace. But there is this great, resource that Scott McKnight developed and he called it the playbill for the cosmic drama. So as you read revelation, we wanna create a glossary of terms for you to read along with. I think we'll put it on a website.
I don't know how we're gonna do this, but I have a a friend in our church. He's, he he's an artist and he's gonna design some images. And here's here's what will unfold as we do this this book. It will be a clear delineation of a cast of characters, the team lamb versus team dragon. Right?
Because this will be the question for faithful followers. Are you part of team lamb? Yes. Or are you part of team dragon? And the dragon is very it's the devil.
It's Satan. We know that for a fact. We know what those is. But here's a list of of those characters and there's descriptions we'll put online like God on the throne, the 7 spirits. For those of you like, oh, the 7s are 8.
He's talking about the holy spirit. Relax. Relax. You don't need to get all weird about the future 7. No.
No. He's referring to the 7 spirits. That's the holy spirit. Okay. Chill.
The lamb, the allegiant wish, witnesses, the woman, the envoy of angels, the 24 elders. Like, is it a literal no. 12 referring to the patriarchs or the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles. He's talking about the fullness of the people of God. Like, let's go church.
Alright. So 4 living things. And then the one we're obsessed with is team dragon. You know, Babylon. Here's the thing about Babylon is it's Babylon in the old testament, you can find the reference to Babylon in the the through the word Babel.
Right? It's it's worldly power corrupted that uses its power to corrupt and oppress people. It's Babylon is represents a false allure of empire and wealth. It stands as the antithesis of God's kingdom, manufactured in societies outside of God's presence. So there has been a literal Babylon.
Rome was Babylon at the time that this was written in there. I will be Babylon's currently we see and there will be future Babylon's. Are you with me? The dragon is Satan that represents the chaos and evil of the enemies oppressing God and ultimately the battle against the lamb and the and the, and the dragon and the beast from the sea symbolizes the oppressive political power that enacts the will of the dragon representing corrupt empires history that embody the resistance towards God's kingdom. The beast of the earth will be, we'll talk about this in detail, will represent the religious deception that enforces the rule of the first beast leading people towards idolatry.
It symbolizes the false prophecies and idol ideologies of world power throughout its time. And then there's 666 which you're obsessed with. It's like the number always symbolizes human imperfection incompleteness. It also represented Roman, Emperor Nero and the cult of Rome and it stands as a symbol of human systems that fall short of God's design embodying humanity's rebellion against God. We'll talk about it when we get there.
But for now, know that these images, these metaphors have a play bill, a cast of characters we'll talk about as we go. I'm gonna end with a couple of themes that I really need you to grab onto. Okay? The themes of revelation are so important. You're gonna hear these over and over again, and you're gonna see them over and over again.
The first is so important. I've already mentioned this. It's seeing and hearing. It's interesting. John is obsessed with seeing and hearing even in his epistles like that which we saw with our own hands with I'm sorry.
We saw with our own eyes and touch with our own hands. That which we concern the word of life when he writes his epistle in 1st John. Forty times in revelation, he says, I saw. 32 32 times he says, I heard. Dow Daryl Johnson in his book, Discipleship on the Edge, which is a commentary on the book of Revelation.
Very helpful book. Says, the primary encouragement to the reader is not to trust and obey, but to listen and look. Especially look. John is telling us we are having a hard time trusting and obeying Jesus Christ in our life because we are not listening and looking. Correction, we are listening and looking.
It is just that we are not listening and looking at the right things. Like this is a summary of the book of revelation from the the author as he writes, his summary of John. John is getting you to say, many of you are looking and listening at the wrong things. The book of Revelation is to look and listen at the right things. And how many of you are distracted by the things of this world and you're carrying around the distractions and you're missing out what is ultimate truth?
That's Jesus on the throne. So there's a there's a list of looks throughout the bible. We'll skip to that. The other theme is the great unseen realities. There's 3 great unseen realities.
Let me let me pause. As I was preparing, I had this note right here, and I shared it in the first service, and there was like a level of holy spirit oil on it. And I don't feel it right now for this service, but I'm gonna do it out of obedience. Okay? I really do think that that idea of seeing and hearing is probably the most significant thing you can hear today.
Because I think so many of you are longing to see only that you have been blinded by Satan And you wouldn't call it Satan, you'd call it distracted by social media. You call it distracted by, you know, consuming Amazon Prime or streaming Netflix or binge watching your show. But the truth is it's that Satan, the God of this present age has veiled your eyes to see what is true. 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 says, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
You aren't seeing, you aren't perceiving, you aren't hearing, not because you're distracted, but because Satan has veiled him, Jesus from you. There's no solution of disciplines. There's no solution of doing more church, or consuming more podcasts, or doing that diet and starting that fast. The solution is to turn from that god and turn to Jesus. You won't see, you won't hear unless Jesus himself unveils it to you.
And there are so many sleepy Christians in our church that have made it easy to add Jesus to your life, add Jesus as an accessory to the busyness of your life, come in and out when it pleases rather than redefine your life. That there's no say a prayer and stay anonymous in the church. It's yes, Jesus is Lord, I'm getting dunked in water. That's the only biblical response to faith in Christ that we see in the Bible. It means I believe and I will show you I believe by getting wet, symbolizing my old self is dead with Jesus on the cross.
My old self is buried with him in the tomb, and my new self is coming again in the resurrection of new life because of him. That is the only symbol of faith and obedience to Jesus. That is the opposite of today's culture of making it easy for you to add him to your life. There's no such thing. The church needs to get rid of that cheap grace.
Adding seats to gatherings. We need to recognize that following Jesus is a death. If you've never said yes to Jesus, and you're saying yes right now because the holy spirit is prompting you, and you're gonna get baptized today, let me make a promise to you. He will not make your life easier. You now have a target on your back against team dragon, and they're gonna come after you every inch of this kingdom of God you step in.
They will contest that inch every way they can with fear and insecurity and lies and sickness and the power of this age until he comes back. And the followers of Jesus at the time the book of revelation was written were being marched to the Colosseum, burned alive, crucified, eaten by wild animals and gladiators for spectators to see. And John wants you to know, he's sitting on the throne. But here's the deal, You might have warm fuzzies because the sermon has some oil on it for a moment. But let me tell you this, you have 2 choices.
Be marked by the lamb of God, which is a life laid down for the rest of your life, sealed with the holy spirit, or be marked by the beast. There's no in between. He will say to the church that's culturally formed, I will spit you out of my mouth. Do you wanna be spit out? No.
Or do you wanna be singing holy, holy, holy? Is the Lord God almighty who was and is to come, and is to come. As the angels cry out, we respond with this ancient echo of truth against the powers that be. There is one God and he took a form of a human. He died on the cross, and he's raised from the dead.
You gotta see it and hear it. Are you with me? Yes. Maybe we should just end there. Will you just close your eyes?
2nd Corinthians 3 verse 16 says, but whenever anyone turns towards the lord, the veil is taken away. How many of you wanna see the lord? That word turns is the word repentance. It's the same idea that you were headed down one direction. Now you change directions.
You had this idea about what you thought the world was about, but now you recognize that the world has a God and that God is named Jesus and you wanna be as close to him as possible. So what you do is you repent from your own ways, from your past, from your ideas, from your habits, and you and you turn to Jesus and it says that veil is taken away. And then it goes on to say, now the Lord is spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. And when you repent and humility and turn to Jesus, he offers you freedom. He doesn't just leave you in your own, he wants to change your life.
It goes on to say, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory and being transformed into his image with every increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is spirit. In other words, you are being transformed into the image of the king, Jesus Christ. When you turn from your way towards Jesus, you receive not just salvation, but new life in the present and into the future for the rest of your life. You're being made into his image, which means you're being made fully alive. Revelation will talk about the I am that Jesus calls himself the I am.
I am the alpha, the omega. I am the first and the last. I am the beginning and the end. You will say that the time is near because the time is always near because the king is always moving towards new creation and the book will have the biggest theme that he is coming. Not that he will come, but that he is coming.
He is in the process of coming. Jesus is not sitting on a throne passively anticipating some future date when he finally gets up and moves towards us. No, he is moving right now towards us in this moment. And the question is, what will you do? Will you worship the lamb who is slain, or will you will you worship the beast?
For those of you that are here, the end of the book says, the spirit and the bride say, come, And let the one who hears say, come. Let the one who is thirsty come. And the one who wishes the free gift of the water of life, he who testifies of things says, yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with God's people. Amen. So with your eyes closed, I just wanna give you some some of you a chance to respond and repent and give your life to Jesus. If that's you, would you stand up where eyes eyes are closed. I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hand.
I'm gonna ask you to stand up. Go ahead. Go ahead. Stand up. I know it takes a lot to stand up.
You're you're returning from your past and you wanna rededicate your life to Jesus. You wanna take this moment to say, I'm serious about Jesus. I'm team lamb all the way. Stand up. I'm a pray for you.
Thank you for standing. Are there not more? Yeah. Thank you. I know it takes some time.
There's a lot of us. Keep your eyes closed. I'm gonna pray this. Would you for those of you that are standing, I'll give you a couple more minutes just moments just to stand if you wanna do it. Thank you.
There's a lot of us. In your own heart and in your head, would you just repeat this confession? Lord, I confess you as lord and savior. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I confess that you're raised from the dead.
I renounce the world and its promises. I renounce the promises of Satan, and I hold fast to your teaching. Lord Jesus, give me your holy spirit and let me faithfully follow you for the rest of my life. I pray this in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen.
Can we all stand together? There's there's a bunch of people that say, would you give it up for your brothers and sisters that courageously give us?
Outro: Thank you for listening. For more information, visit us at garden.church.