John: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. My name is John Gunter. This week, we're talking about, the story, the final chapters, chapter 31, talking about Revelation and the end of time. Now, I spent a lot of time, last year talking about Revelation, and so Jordan doesn't dive into a lot of that, but just ties it into the overall theme of the story, talking about the upper story and the lower story and how we experience life here on earth. Thanks again for listening, and come see us anytime you can.
Jordan: Good morning again. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, like I said earlier, John, is out today. He, got to take off and enjoy some time with family for, Thanksgiving.
My family got to come. And if you see, we all look alike. You can see where I got the name Santos from, and you can see where I got my pale white skin from. So, so there you go. So there you go.
But John, he's off the family, and I think that's why he said he was taking off. I think he really took off because he didn't wanna talk about revelation again after preaching about it for a few months last year. So so he got to pass that off to me. But this is the last week of the story, chapter 31. And it's been a very long journey, not because, oh, it feels like forever, but because we've taken the whole year to do it, and it's so impactful for me, and maybe you'll say the same, to have seen the story of the bible progress over time, in a way that oftentimes we don't think about.
A lot of times we like to focus on whatever the Bible story is for the week, and then that's that's an isolated incident. And then next week, we're talking about a different Bible story. That's an isolated incident, which is not always the healthiest thing to do. So it was great this year to see how the story, of God progressed from the beginning of time all the way to revelation. And, hopefully, how we see that story continue to live, through us each and every day.
Hopefully, you all had a great Thanksgiving. I was thankful for, a lot of things in my life. Unfortunately, Abby had to work on Thanksgiving. So I wasn't thankful for that, but, there are a lot of things to be thankful for. I hope you all had a great time.
We have a kind of a full crowd for a holiday weekend. I wasn't really expecting this, so good job, everyone. But, yeah, last year, John talked a lot about Revelation, and he worked really hard to pull us away from the usual concept of revelation that we have. A lot of people look at revelation of how can I figure out when the world is gonna end? Right?
And, we spend a lot of time trying to hammer that out of our vocabulary. How we can look at, the craziness of the language and, the immaculate stories and the creatures with thousands of eyes and how to, how to look at that in a way that's not doom and gloom. Right? And because John spent so much time going through all those things, I'm not going to attempt to go through what he took months doing in the 25 minutes that I'm going to be up there this morning. We're not gonna do that.
So the goal for today is to kind of understand how this book plays its part in the story that we've been talking about, how narratively it fits into, the not only the earthly story, but the heavenly story, the, the things that god has been doing in his world. Right? And so it's kind of opens oh, forgot that you got slides for this. Oh, there's there's this thing. There you go.
Okay. It opens with a introduction to who the letter is to. Right? So, John, he is in prison, on the island of Patmos. He's been, And he is told that this vision is meant for, these churches.
And this is how his letter to these churches opens up. John, to the 7 churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace be to you, from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the 7 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 and to serve his God and father. To him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. I appreciated when Robert was leading singing, he led the the amens.
They're in at the end of a lot of songs, we don't usually sing them, but, here we see it again. Amen. Amen. So, we have these 7 churches that are found in Asia Minor, which is in modern day Turkey, and they are in a land that is occupied by the Roman Empire. Okay?
I don't know how much you understand about the Roman Empire, but it was around for a long, long, long time. K? And we see their stamp repeatedly throughout the new testament. We, throughout the life of Jesus, he's in conflict, not only with the Jewish leaders, but, the Rome the Roman occupiers, in the land. The early church in Paul had to deal with Rome a lot.
And then now in Revelation, we get to see Rome pop up again. And this book is written to churches that are scattered across, Roman occupied land, like I said, in modern day Turkey. And, Rome occupied most of the world for 14 centuries. Right? That is 1400 years.
That is a long time. I don't even know what was going on 1400 years ago. I think Rome was still active 1400 years ago. Right? And so this is not just a territory of Rome, but it is kind of drenched in Roman culture.
Alexander the Great founded one of the cities that, or many of the cities actually where these churches belonged and even placed his famous library in Pergamum, which is one of the, cities that house one of the churches, that Paul writes to in this letter. All these cities had cultural significance, whether to Rome or another ancient culture like the Greeks or the Lydians or the Phrygian, I think is how you say it. Despite that reality, these churches were these churches who were in the thick of all these other religious influences, their perseverance through that was really difficult. That's something that, we've talked about with, the teens throughout this year is, people in bible times, they had so many options of God's to choose from. And, understandably, it was hard for these, Christians who are meeting in these, small house churches to, not only worship, but to spread the gospel at all.
Right? And when, John is writing to these, churches, he includes a couple things. He includes a praise and an encouragement slash warning. Even Laodicea Laodicea who's criticized for being the lukewarm church, is told that the lord loves told that those who the lord loves, he rebukes and disciplines them. Right?
And so the point is that early Christians, they had plenty of options of who to worship. And, I like to think of it, in this way. Anyone know what this place is? CC's Pizza. I'm glad that my sister knew that.
CC's Pizza. In Asia Minor, like I said, there are a lot of religious influences. There is a buffet of gods for them to choose from, mythological pantheons with 100 and 100 of little g gods. Right? So imagine you go to a I look at it this way.
Imagine you go to Assisi's buffet and you walk in and for $9, you can, you can choose from dozens of different pizza pies. Right? Including even some dessert ones. And there's also a salad bar. You have so many options.
You know? And even if you don't see the one that you want out on the little thing, you can ask them, say, hey. I want this, and they'll make it for you and put it out. Right? So you you have plenty of options.
But then, also, imagine you go into the same Cici's Pizza, except you walk into the bathroom, and there are a group of people sitting in the dark, and they you walk in and they tell you, you need to there's one true pizza, and you need to only eat the one true pizza. Right? And if you don't eat the one true pizza and ignore all the other pizzas, like, it's going to go poorly for you, but also eating the one true pizza is punishable, punishable by death by the government. So, there were a lot of options around, and the one for God was not the most appealing one, I would say, if you were living in Rome. But apparently, it still was a convincing story because the church continued to grow and it grew to where we get to be today.
Right? People were converting all the time. But anyways, this is how John opens his letter, to the churches. And then in the middle, we have the visions and, the 7 headed dragon, and the creature with a 1,000 eyes, and the armies of the lord, and the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. And, like I said, John, we walked through all that in detail, and, I'm not going to try and, do all of that again.
But I do wanna kinda jump to how, the book ends. Okay? So in Revelation 22, 6 through 21, this is how this book and our Bible ends. The angel said to me, these words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the prophets, sent his angels to show his servants the things that must soon take place.
Look. I am coming soon. Blessed is someone who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll. I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things, and when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. But he said to me, don't do that.
I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets, and with all who keep the words of this scroll, worship God. But then he told me, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll because the time is near. Let the one who does not who let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong, let the vile person continue to be vile, let the one who does right continue to do right, and let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes that they might have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright and morning star.
The spirit and the bride said, come, and let the one who hears say, come. Let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. I want everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this scroll, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if everyone takes words away from the scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this scroll. He who testified to these things said, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord be with God's people. Amen. So this last chapter, this is most of the the last chapter, I can tell is meant to be a call to hope.
Right? It's written to Christians who are in the thick of it, like we talked about, who are suffering consistently, and living in fear of what might happen to them if they're found out. But Jesus says, I am coming soon. I have a reward for you, and I'll meet you at the tree of life. This is good news for them.
Right? And I can tell it's meant to be good for us, but if I'm honest, it always hasn't or that hasn't always sounded like good news to me at different points in my life. This has offered more confusion than hope, I think, and I've asked the question, and maybe you have 2, if death will be so great, then what is the point of living? Right? If heaven's gonna be so awesome, then why am I stuck here on earth?
You know? What's the point of it all? Would rather be in heaven than be living the life that they were stuck in. But I kind of like being alive. Right?
And I felt guilt about that before. You know? Like, I felt guilty that, I didn't want to jump into the arms of God as soon as possible. And, this idea oh, well, hypothetically, if Jesus came back tomorrow, like, I don't know if I'd be ready to go. And I think maybe some of you have felt that way before.
This idea is a little more prominent around the holidays, especially over Thanksgiving. You know? We're we're reminded of all the reasons we're thankful to be alive and all the good things we have. And the human heart is really fickle. We can go from the thankfulness of Thanksgiving to the greediness of Black Friday.
You know? And I'm not the first person to say this, but, this was what Black Friday used to look like. We were talking amongst my family of how Black Friday just isn't the same as it used to be. It's not as, hectic as this. I think I on Black Friday, I went to the grocery store for some groceries, and it was pretty, like, bare.
Like, there weren't many people there, which is so different from what it used to be. People used to get in fights and, you know, people get arrested for trying to get the deals. But this was back when, you know, Black Friday was 80% off of something. I saw a video on the Internet, and it was at Target. And they had all the TVs out at Target, and it had signs that said Black Friday sale.
I think it was 64999 was the sale Black Friday sale for the TV. And then the person who was videoing it, they pulled back the Black Friday sign, and there was a separate sale sign underneath it. And it said, special one time sale, 64999. So they hadn't changed the sale at all from Black Friday. They just put the Black Friday sticker on it, and it's supposed to make you think that, oh, wow.
Prices have never been lower. You know? But it's not really like that anymore. Anyways, I used to think that I was a bad Christian because instead of, saying, come, lord Jesus, come, like, Revelation says, I would I would think, you know, wait, lord Jesus, until I've lived my full life and then you can come. Right?
Or, you know, my kids I want my kids to have a full life too, so maybe wait till after them. But then my grandparents are gonna my grandkids, they're gonna be so cute. Maybe wait till they live their full life, and then you can come. Right? I think it comes from a kind of a misunderstanding of some of these scriptures.
I was almost afraid that the world might, end and interrupt all the good things that I had in my life. Should, should I want to die? Should I want Jesus to come back now immediately at this moment? Because sometimes it feels like that's what the scripture says, and I don't feel that. And I felt, like I said, a lot of guilt about that, and maybe you've been in the same place.
I think those feelings come from a lack of understanding, kind of mixed with a little bit of selfishness on our part. And I wanna talk through those things so that we can maybe have a better sense of what to do with these verses. So first of all, all good things come from God. This is James 1 verse 17 verse 17. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows.
So all good things come from god, everything. My wife, my family, my house, my dog, Jerry, all I can list so many more things, all the good things in my life, and they would still be gifts from God. And even though I'm sure God does not care about my big TV that I watch sports on, I'm able to have those things, things like that because of the jobs that I may not have, which are gift from God. Right? The temptation is to say that all those things are mine because I worked hard for them, including my relationships with people that I care about.
But, when I remind myself that God is the one blessing me, then it's kind of easier for me to loosen the grip, on the life that I'm clinging onto. Right? The other thing that I think feeds into this guilt over wanting to live, is it's hard to comprehend eternity. Right? Especially a good kind of eternity.
Through my lived experience, it feels like, good times are the fleeting ones and the bad times are the ones that last forever. Have you heard the question, what weighs more a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? Have you ever heard that before? And, obviously, they weigh the same. They both weigh a ton.
But our perception of, oh, wow. Bricks have to weigh a lot more than feathers. And it's just, what the thing is kind of perceives, changes our perception of it. So, I think it's the same with time. So think about this.
What takes longer, 5 minutes of exercise or 5 minutes of the water break afterwards, right? The water break goes by real quick, but the exercise go forever. How many of you ever tried to hold a plank? A minute long plank is eternity. Okay?
What takes longer? The 8 minutes to boil the pasta or the 8 minutes to scarf down the whole bowl, right? Waiting for it takes forever. Or what takes longer, a week of work or a week of vacation. A week of work lasts so much longer.
And even in my own life, the 3 nights that Abby works, are infinitely longer than the 4 nights that she doesn't. And And, obviously, that's not literally true, but the feeling of it is true because of our perception. And so, that's what makes eternity in heaven so hard to grasp because, it seems like the annoying, uncomfortable, and frustrating parts of my life are the things that tend to drag on forever and take the longest, which is in conflict with my knowledge because I know that there's going to be no more tears and pain and crying in heaven. There's no more death. I know that heaven is good, but our I think our human minds are limited to actually perceive what that could actually mean for us.
It's hard to imagine how that could even be possible. And I think our fear limits how far our faith is willing to go, sometimes. And I'll admit, because there's nothing like it on earth that we could connect it to. Right? So the conclusion that I've come to is that in order to wrestle with my human emotions of this verse, The goal is instead to live without fear.
Okay? We see this exemplified by many of the early church leaders. 10 out of the 12 disciples died because of their faith. They're martyrs, except for Judas who, hung himself after he had betrayed Jesus. And then, John, the one who, sees this vision and writes this letter, he's the only one that died of old age.
But everyone else, they were beheaded. They were stoned. They were killed for what they were doing. And and also Paul, you know, we talked about last week, Paul died. He was beheaded because of all of the work that he was doing for his faith.
And there were many more of the time, and there were many more after these people that we read about in the Bible who death was going to be their sweet release into heaven. Right? That's not what they were after. They didn't chase after death, Instead, they chased after Jesus and his mission, without fear of death. And I think that's something that you and I can learn a big lesson from.
So if we look at who this letter is written to to, people in churches who are suffering, who are persecuted, if they read this and their message was, okay. It's better to die, right now. We may not have had the faith that we have today. Right? If all the people in these churches had, read this revelation and decided, you know what, it's it's good to die as soon as possible.
I don't think we would have this church here today. Right? It would have been long gone. As we've gone through the entire story of the Bible this year, we've seen this kind of classic love story, starring a love triangle, actually, between God, Satan, the world, and people. Right?
And, this story, people have chased after everything except the father who gave them everything. And despite that, God loved us so much that he gave us countless chances and even sacrificed his son so that our relationship would have a future. We've seen that play play out over the 31 weeks and we have a chance to respond. Okay? We've gone through this, we've read the entire story of the Bible, and we can't not do nothing.
Right? I guess that is an option. We could, live our lives continually unchanged despite, everything that we've read. We can continue to follow the wind, to live in fear, prioritize our comfort. Or are we willing to respond the way that John calls us to in Revelation?
Whenever he opens up, whenever he opens up his book, talking to the churches, he says repeatedly, he who has ears, let him hear. Right? He who has ears, let him hear. And in chapter 22, as John is ending this book, he says this. Let me see.
In chapter 22, he says this that, Anyone who hears should say, come, Lord Jesus, come. And that's us. Right? Anyone who has ears, let them hear. And anyone who hears, let them say, come, Lord Jesus, come.
That's us. Right? Are we willing to say, I hear you, God. Come, Lord Jesus. The last verse in our Bible says this, our last two verses.
He who testified to these things says, yes, I am coming soon. And Paul says, amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen.
Are we willing to say that? Because oftentimes in my life, I'm so afraid to say that because of what it means for my earthly life. And that fear limits my faith to where I'm not fully embracing the life that God may have for me sometimes. And so are you willing to not live in order to die? But are you willing to live for Jesus despite what death could mean?
Because we know what death means for us. Death means a life eternal with God, with no more suffering, and pain, and tears. I think that's hard for me, maybe that's hard for you, But my challenge is, for us, after we've looked at this whole story and all the things that God has done in the world and continues to do in the world, are we willing to embrace this? Are we willing to say, yes, Jesus, I'm ready for you to come? Whatever that means.
If that's tomorrow, if it's long after I'm dead, are we ready for that? That's a question that all of you can ask yourself and it's not an easy one to answer. But this morning, if you have, a struggle with any of that, if you have a struggle with any part of your faith, if you need the church for any reason, if you need prayers, if you need, guidance, if you just need love and support, if you need a hug, that's what this church family is for. If you, are thinking about the story, of God and his people and you decided that you wanna respond, and you wanna respond by, committing your life to him and, to putting on his son in baptism, we can do that also for you this morning. However, you need to respond, whatever you need, please come as we stand and send them together.