Revelation

Hello and welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are thrilled that you
have taken time out of your day to join us for our next conversation.
Today we are turning our attention to the very last book in the New Testament,
in fact the very last book in the Scriptures.
And as we look to Revelation we find
really the culmination of that which has come before a real fitting to even the
very beginning of the Bible.
We see Revelation tying up themes that we’ve
seen throughout the entire Scriptures and it does it in some really unique,
interesting, and even challenging ways.
So we’re glad that you’ve joined us for
the conversation and we start with a few words about the kind of literature that
Revelation is and how we can see in it some of the meaning that might be here for us.
Yeah, I think that when you approach the book of Revelation it’s
really one of the few books that doesn’t work to just start reading.
You need to know a little something about this book for it to make any sense.
It’s called a revealing an uncovering and the idea is that John here is pulling back the
curtain on the timeline on the events of the end of the era or the age and that
has made Revelation fascinating to lots of people and to be honest for lots of
the wrong reasons.
There’s a wonderful quote that I like from a pastor named
Craig Barnes and he said,
“When it comes to the book of Revelation there’s two types of Christians,
those who really like it and those who are afraid of those
who really like it.” And Revelation is probably one of the most abused books in
the New Testament, one of the most misunderstood books because it’s
different.
You know, it’s symbolic,
it’s strange,
the imagery is unusual,
these are not our symbols, these are not our images,
and so we have not known in some cases
what to do with them.
How you approach Revelation has a lot to do with what you
think this book is.
If you think this book is some kind of secret code to
unlock all the mysteries of the end of time and predictions about what will
happen, then you’re going to read it a very specific way.
On the other hand,
if you think this is a fascinating look at the early church and the faith they
placed in God in the midst of persecution and struggle,
then I think this is a book that can be very inspiring,
can be very compelling,
and I think in the midst of all of its strangeness really has a pretty profound
and pretty direct word to us in our era,
though I think not always the one that people expect.
A facet that you see in ancient literature,
not even in religious literature, is a real comfort level with the idea of metaphor,
the idea of symbolism.
You see in ancient texts of all kinds this pointing to
current events blended with very out of the ordinary kind of language.
And in the midst of that blending between what we might call fact and fiction,
I’m not sure that’s exactly how they would communicate it,
but what we see in that
tension is the reality that these people were dealing with very real situations
and as they saw those situations in really nuanced and even creative ways,
they put Christ at the center of all of it.
And I think as you turn your
attention here to the book of Revelation,
I think one thing that’s going to jump
out to you is you’re going to see that Jesus Christ is at the center of this whole thing.
Yes, there’s lots of very vibrant imagery.
Yes, there’s even some confusing references to this beast and that beast and stars and all of these
different things that you might be tempted to focus on.
But if you get
honed in on those details,
you’re going to miss the things sitting right at the
center of this book over and over and over again.
It is the very words that the book ends with,
“Come Lord Jesus,
come.” And he is from the beginning of this book
to the end of this book,
the thread line that you can follow.
Yeah, I think maybe two things about this book are helpful as we start.
One, it surprises some people
to know that Revelation is part of a broad collection of literature like it
in the ancient world.
It’s the Christian version,
but there were Jewish
apocalyptic writings that were very much like this and they shared some aspects that were important.
They tend to be dualistic,
God versus evil, light versus dark, faith versus the world.
They tend to be symbolic and their symbolism is
different than ours, so it looks odd.
I grew up on old western movies and you
always knew the bad guy because he had a black hat.
In our political cartoons,
donkeys square off with elephants and we understand what that means.
The problem with Revelation is we’re looking in on someone else’s set of symbols.
So when we see dragons,
when we see certain colors or certain numbers,
we don’t know what they mean.
The thing that is helpful,
I think Michael, is to remember that the
people who read this book understood it.
It meant something to them.
It wasn’t an unknowable book to them.
It spoke to their current situation.
It spoke to their persecution.
It spoke to it in ways that were coded or covered in some ways.
They had to use some of the language to avoid saying some things outright
because of their circumstances,
but they knew what it meant.
And then I think the
second thing that’s helpful to understand about the book of Revelation is that it
is a letter to the church.
It wasn’t written for 21st century Christians to
figure out when the world was going to end.
It’s of a particular context.
It means something and it’s dramatic,
it’s vivid,
it’s strange.
But at heart, if you read it carefully, it simply tells the story of God being unwilling to forfeit
the world and being victorious over any powers that stand against Him.
And the idea of Revelation was supremely good news to the church.
You know, Clint, I’ve already had a couple people come up to me ahead of time and say that they
really aren’t looking forward to reading this book.
And the honest truth is,
I would count myself as part of their number.
This book, for me, for a number of
reasons, has a pretty troubled and checkered past.
And one of those is
because the community of faith that I grew up in very much read this book with
the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
And trying to find how the
person they found in the newspaper fits directly into the symbols and meaning of
this book.
And not to go into what that means theologically and what impact that
has, but it is to say when you read the Bible trying to figure out what 21st
century concerns fit into the words and symbolism of this book,
you’re going to set yourself up to miss the richness and the beauty and the meaning of the book.
As I read Revelation through for the 90-day project here,
I got to admit you,
it raised up in my register by a lot because I saw in this book a kind of encouragement,
the feeling that we as Christians need to stick with it.
We need to be strong even when things seem that they are against us,
even when we seem
surrounded and life is a struggle,
even when times are hard.
There’s meaning behind it.
There’s not just a little meaning.
There’s a lot of meaning.
There’s a whole heavenly house proclaiming glory to God in the highest.
It’s a beautiful image and reminder to us that there’s more the life than what we see.
There’s more for living than this moment.
And if you’re willing to open your eyes
to the richness of what is here,
you’re gonna see a lot more than the small
world that we live in right now.
But you’re gonna be open to a world that’s
much bigger than that.
And in that, I think as I finished this reading,
it felt like a beautiful conclusion to the story.
Yeah, 100%, Michael.
I think it helps to remember that the book is addressed not only to people who are
struggling in general, but struggling in some very specific ways.
This book probably comes from a time of severe persecution where literally the power of
the world, the Roman Empire, the most powerful force on the face of the earth,
had turned its focus to Christians and was actively trying to stamp out this
faith.
There were Christians being hung,
being tortured,
being captured.
There were families being put to death.
They were taken to the Coliseum.
They were in no small way at war with the powers around them,
and they had no earthly
power to stand up.
And so what do they do?
They go back to the idea that the Creator,
that the Sustainer, Redeemer, that the most powerful force in all of
the world, unknown to most of the others around them,
is for them and will not
abandon them.
And therefore, they must be faithful even if it costs them their life.
And so there is in this book a deep call to faith,
but I think it helps to
remember that it comes from a time of really intense struggle,
intense persecution.
And this is literally a life-or-death matter for the people who
read this book first.
Just a quick overview of some of those major themes, I think,
raises that point even more,
Clint. Things like who is one of the hero figures?
The sacrificed lamb.
In the midst of a story full of dragons and full of
huge monsters and stars being hurled to the earth and entire waterways being poisoned,
you have this lamb,
which is this amazingly powerful figure of Jesus’s
sacrifice on our behalf.
But you have even more than that.
You have how you hear
calls being sent out to Christians,
those who are beheaded even,
and saying that those are the first ones resurrected,
that they get to reign with
Christ first, and those who will be martyrs themselves,
that that company is
waiting for those to join them.
It’s just over and over and over again there’s
nods to people who are struggling,
people who are seeking to be faithful,
and in the midst of what seems like unassailable odds,
this is a reminder that
there’s a much bigger army waiting behind you than what you feel right now.
Absolutely, and it’s difficult to talk about the chronology of Revelation
because it’s really written more in scenes than it is with any kind of connected flow.
But you see that,
I think, clearly at the end of the book where
there’s this Satan character,
this dragon, and within one verse as the giant battle
is set up, an angel just grabs him by the scruff of the neck and throws him into
the lake of fire.
It’s not even God who does it.
It’s just an angel that the
most powerful force of evil on earth is so inconsequential for God that he just
sends one of the angels to go,
“Oh, by the way, go throw him in the pit.” There’s no big battle here.
There’s no doubt as to the conclusion for the Christians,
they know the outcome, and it’s not even close.
And that’s the encouragement that
Revelation offers a struggling and suffering church.
You have to read it
that way.
If you don’t read it that way,
if you assume this book is written to us
instead of them, there’s just no way you can do justice to what this book intended to do.
And I would point to the very beginning of this book as example
par excellence of that very statement,
Clint, because right from the very
beginning you have individual churches in real places,
real cities, being named.
And as they’re named,
you have a short address to each church offer.
And my goodness,
each one, you feel like you get a small sense for that community.
You get a small sense for what they’re doing right.
And in some of these communities
cases, you’re getting a big sense about what they’re doing wrong.
Yeah, and of course, Revelation being Revelation,
it doesn’t just say there’s a church in
this place.
It says there’s a golden lampstand.
What does a lampstand do?
It just needs to go along with Revelation as it shares these things with you.
Don’t overthink what it may mean.
And if it seems too difficult to understand,
skip it.
Go on and we can talk about it later or you can look it up.
But Revelation in its own way for such a strange book is surprisingly simple at its core, I think.
You look to some of these things that are spoken in that very apocalyptic
language.
I’m looking here in chapter 2 verse 9.
It says, “I know your affliction and your poverty,
yet you are rich.
I know of the slander of those who say that they
are Jews and are not,
but are a synagogue of Satan.” We’ve seen issues like this in
all of the Pauline letters.
This isn’t new to the Scriptures,
but it’s a new way
of envisioning it, a new way of speaking about it,
a new way of addressing it.
And if you were going to get hung up on the big language,
you’re going to miss the simple meaning.
These churches are struggling because they’re poor.
They’re struggling because there’s multiple kinds of teachings happening in their midst.
And in fact, as you go later into the accounts of these churches,
you hear of the one church in Laodicea.
It says in chapter 3 verse 16, “You are lukewarm,
neither hot or cold.
I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Here’s another church.
They haven’t gone all in for Christ,
but they haven’t disavowed
Christ.
They’re somewhere in the middle.
What good is that?
And so you hear in
what might be very strong language,
an account of real people trying to live
out the faith.
And if you’ve ever had a moment in life where things just seem
to be coming off the rails,
you can appreciate what it feels like to be all
in or all out.
Everything’s bad or everything’s good.
And that’s really the
sort of context you hear as these churches are addressed.
Yeah, and I think the book of Revelation is part of a kind of literature that tends to do that.
Things are very black and white.
This isn’t a gray kind of book.
You’re in or you’re out.
Stop doing that or else.
Do this or else.
The martyrs, the dragons.
There is a duality to this book that I think runs throughout just about every
part of it where it’s God’s way or God’s justice,
God’s punishment.
It’s good or bad.
And there’s just not much middle in a book like Revelation.
What’s interesting about Revelation as it connects to the Gospel of John,
of course, with that historical tradition of John writing both,
I think it’s fascinating,
Clint, that in both books the idea of being a witness is front and
center from the author’s perspective.
The author in both the Gospel of John and
Revelation is trying to tell us,
“I’m giving you account of what I’ve seen.” And
as you know that in our conversations about John,
Clint, that Gospel of all
four Gospels is the most fluid in its telling of Jesus’s life.
It really is less concerned about chronology and is more interested in providing us a
witness or a testimony to the spiritual aspect of Jesus’s life.
Revelation is like the Gospel of John highly caffeinated.
It is seeing the truth of
what is except seeing it completely in the spiritual realm.
And so after these
words about the lampstands and the churches,
you get this glimpse into heaven,
into the eternal spiritual places.
And if that sounds strange and is
difficult, you know, that may be something because of our own scientific
21st century mindset.
But if you’re willing to set that aside for a second,
there is so much spiritual meaning.
There’s so much that can be related to
in this account of what the eternal looks like.
Yeah, and I think it’s
helpful to remember that John himself calls this a vision,
that he’s sharing with us a vision.
And as we enter that fourth chapter and we look into what my
study Bible calls heavenly worship,
we begin to experience some of what we’re
going to see throughout this book.
So numbers matter in Revelation 12 and
multiples of 12 are important.
Four is important.
Seven is very important.
And so we have 24 thrones and 24 elders.
Well, what’s 24?
Twice 12.
Probably 12 tribes of Israel,
12 disciples.
What do they do?
They’re dressed in white,
golden crowns, and they worship.
And there are these living creatures,
four living creatures.
The fiercest, a lion, the strongest, an ox, the smartest, a human, and the most majestic an eagle.
So, John picks from what is the best of categories of the
created order and he puts them in heaven.
They’re covered with eyes.
They see everything.
They know everything.
And seeing and knowing everything leads them
to what?
To constant worship, day and night without ceasing.
They fall in front
of God and they sing,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and
is to come.” And John I think does us a beautiful service in beginning this
story, this telling or this series of scenes with a picture of this almost unimaginable worship.
The glory and the worth of the one seated on the throne
for whom all creation should praise but doesn’t.
And at least we start with praise
here.
And I think that’s a powerful way to start this part of the book.
Absolutely,
Clint.
And in reading it this time through,
you know, it really hit me,
especially in these sections where it recounts the words that they’re saying,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” I heard in this section this
beautiful phrasing, which I just heard in the words of the people who received this book.
Can you imagine being caught up in the vision of this heavenly worship
and then going to church on Sunday and using these words in your worship
service, in praying this,
in speaking it, in singing it?
This is an invitation not
just to see ahead,
but for this to be worked into our own worshiping life as a
people, for this to be prayed by us,
for us to yearn for this as we hear John’s
vision of what will be,
we can join our own imaginations for what is right now.
So I think once again,
this is a really amazing opportunity for us to see not
just the spiritual, but for it to inform our own spiritual disciplines,
our own life.
And in fact, some of these words have been cast into words of songs that we sing today.
Yes, and I think the natural flow then becomes if God is going to fulfill His promise,
if God is going to establish His kingdom amongst the people,
then that inevitably means something else is going
to be replaced.
And so for the next several chapters in the book,
we have essentially the
calling down of punishment,
of justice, of judgment, as the old things must be forced out,
as they must be dealt with,
and the price must be paid for the disobedience that they have brought
with them in order to make way for the thing God is going to do.
And we begin with these seven seals and the punishments.
But I think the interesting assumption in Revelation is,
and especially given that this is to a church struggling and suffering,
that in order to get better,
it has to first be bad.
We often don’t think that way as American Christians.
We often think things just keep getting
better.
But scripturally speaking, there is often an assumption that whatever God is trying to do
will have opposition and it may get rough.
Yeah, and what may be a troubling aspect of this book, Clint,
is that God is in control the whole time.
This isn’t really a struggle of whether God is
going to come out in the end or whether these judgments are going to be the final word.
God is in control the whole time.
And in fact, as this judgment is being metered out,
oftentimes you hear phrases like God is just,
that God is right in doing this.
So as these calamities are befalling
the world, God is always in the seat of justice,
the throne of righteousness.
And it’s worth noting
in that that the early Christians see a God who doesn’t need anything,
a God who doesn’t have any
challenger, a God who’s meeting out justice.
And for them, that’s good news.
To people outside of
that, this can be troubling.
A third of the waters are poisoned and people die at huge earthquakes
and people die and people who are essentially progressively caught up in the midst of continued affliction and suffering.
And yet notice their hearts don’t change.
They’re too inwardly focused
to even be able to see the goodness and rightness of God’s judgment and righteousness.
So once again, in this book, I think we see all good,
all bad.
God is all good.
And the brokenness of the human
heart is all bad.
And if we don’t see the light,
if we don’t come to Christ,
if He is not the
sacrificial lamb for us,
then even in the midst of the most suffering ever known to humanity,
you’re not going to see God.
And that is one of those things that lives in tension throughout this whole book.
Yeah.
And I think it’s fair to say that in Revelation,
the world, and I would even
maybe specify and say the empire of Rome has gone to war with the church,
has essentially attacked God’s people.
And this book describes God’s move to secure victory on their behalf and to overthrow the enemy.
And there’s no question in the book of Revelation that the enemy deserves it,
that God’s punishments are just,
that God’s wrath is deserved.
There’s no worrying here about God being too harsh
because these people have lived on the receiving end of the cruelty and the wickedness of the powers around them.
And they experience them as enemies,
enemies of themselves and of God.
And they are happy.
They rejoice when God fights back on their behalf.
To your point, Michael,
I think there are two moments in this book where John begins to bow down in front of an angel.
And in both instances, the angel is mortified.
The angel, you get the sense just as horrified and says,
stop, stop.
You can’t do that because Revelation is unequivocal.
Nobody deserves our praise and
worship except the one on the throne,
that he alone deserves honor and glory and anything else
is idolatry.
And those who refuse to repent of their idolatry,
those who refuse to turn to the
only righteous one are lost,
are deserving of judgment.
It’s not a comfortable book in some
ways, but it is probably more so when you read it in the context of persecution and of punishment and of oppression.
If you’ve lived on the receiving end of that,
this book is probably really good news.
This book may come across as being fantastic and apocalyptic,
but if that’s all you’re looking for,
you’re going to miss some really amazing moments.
And I think I would point
one out here in chapter 10, verse 9.
It’s this scene where John is with the angel and the angel
comes and he’s given a scroll and the angel says to John,
take the scroll and eat it.
It will turn your stomach sour,
but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.
Pause there for a second.
These words are going to be sweet as honey on your mouth,
but they’re going to be sour in your stomach.
That describes reading this book,
really.
It in so many ways is even entertaining.
That’s not the right
word.
It’s more than entertaining,
but there’s so much happening.
There’s so much literary
creativity in this.
There’s light and color and good and bad.
This book just absorbs your senses
and it does make your stomach turn sour.
It is convicting, even as it is fantastic.
And I think you will find these quiet moments in the book where there’s these deep nuggets and beautiful
truths just nestled within.
And if you read closely,
they’ll jump out at you throughout
the different characters and stories of the book.
I think one of the cautions when it comes to the
book of Revelation is to make sure that we don’t think of it chronologically.
I do think this book
is best understood as scenes and they may or may not be in order.
So, for instance, at the end of
the book, there are references to some portion of the water being affected,
but earlier we read that
all the water has already gone.
So, when you try and nitpick this book and line up the details,
it just doesn’t work.
There are people thrown into the lake late in the book,
the lake of fire,
but earlier in the book,
all the wicked have already been destroyed.
There are people that
have already been judged and then we get told at the end,
they’re kept out of the city.
Well, there’s no wicked people left.
So, when you try to read this book chronologically,
you’re inevitably just going to tie yourself in knots.
I would think a better approach is to take
each scene and ask,
what is it telling us?
So, we have, for instance, chapter 12, “The Woman and the
Dragon.” A woman, she has a crown of 12 stars.
She’s pregnant.
She’s about to deliver a child.
Who is this?
This is Mary.
This is the church and the dragon is trying to destroy the child.
The dragon has seven heads and seven crowns.
In other words, the dragon has all the power,
has all the control.
The dragon was ready to devour the child.
She gave birth to a son,
a male child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.
Well, if you have read scripture,
you know who that is.
This book is full of references from other parts of the Bible.
The child was snatched away,
taken to God and the throne.
What do we read in the Gospel?
That Jesus escaped when Herod was trying to kill him.
This is the story of the church.
This is the story of
Christ.
This is the story of God’s people.
And I think too often we’re looking for this book to
be something it isn’t and we miss what it is.
It is an interesting endeavor to read this book
after the writings of Timothy LaHaye and the Left Behind series and some of the very popular
fictional accounts of Revelation and the End Times because Clint,
they do conceptually think
of the book of Revelation as chronological.
And I think what happens when you think of it chronologically
is you try to tell a story that makes sense and it ends up forcing you to reduce complexities.
And I think it also forces you to put this book in the perspective of a 21st century American
as opposed to an early Christian.
I would point to things like the stars and the references of
things happening in the heavens and asteroids coming down and all these kinds of images.
We tend to not have the same kind of deep understanding and attribute the kind of
significance to the heavenly bodies as ancient people did.
The movement of stars,
constellations,
the several layers of heavens was something that was just common knowledge in that time.
It was deeply important in their understanding of spirituality and even in faith.
And so this idea that this conflict goes even to the heavenly places,
into the cosmos, into the stars, that it’s at that level that you can also see the end of all things.
That is the extent to which these
early Christians are being reminded that the power of God goes.
It’s not just the power of God to
rule over the Roman Empire,
which is enough unto itself.
But God’s power extends even into the
heavenly powers, even into the powers beyond what we can know and see and understand.
And that is to them a reminder that they’re not alone,
that they have what they need,
that God is bigger than
they could have ever imagined.
And that’s good news for them.
But that’s a detail that we might
just pass over as sort of a bonus added in the story.
Yeah,
Revelation does us a service in that
regard.
I think that it’s a cosmic book.
It’s not simply that God is lord over our experience or our
life, not even our church,
our neighborhood,
our country.
It’s over the heavens,
the universe, over all that is.
God is above everything that exists as its origin,
as its sustainer, and ultimately as its judge,
as the one who evaluates its worthiness before Him.
And we live under that
reality in a world that doesn’t recognize it.
And so, what are the beasts?
We have a political beast,
a beast of power,
and then we have a religious beast.
Because where do we often,
most often, get it wrong in our religion and in our power?
In wanting to control and in wanting to be our
own God or to worship an idol.
And we have these moments in the book where we see the most common sinfulness.
And if we understand it,
I think, then we’re also convicted by it as we understand
how often we follow the wrong thing,
how often we are deceived as the people of the book are.
Towards your earlier point,
Clint, where you were talking about how much of the earlier scriptures
find a way into Revelation,
it’s just full of it.
And whether it’s direct and intended or not,
there’s just illusions all over.
I couldn’t help but seeing as I was reading chapters 15 and 16,
the seven bowls of God’s wrath,
the seven plagues brought about,
it’s not the same exact number and
it’s not the same exact type.
But my goodness, I could not help but think about the Israelites in
Egypt and the 10 plagues,
just the locusts and the the water turning to blood and all of these
sort of images you have even in the Old Testament,
you hear echoes of here in Revelation,
things that the people have seen before are things that we’re seeing again.
And then you move forward a little
bit in Israel’s historical timeline.
Babylon just gets a whole ton of time here towards the end of Revelation.
And if you know the scriptures,
the Old Testament scriptures,
Babylon is the approximate
Roman Empire to the Christian church.
It’s this oppressive power that is keeping the people
enslaved and it’s loathing the power over them.
And here,
Babylon gets named with all of the other
forces of power being thought behind it.
So you have all of these different layers,
what was, what is right now to the early Christians experience,
and then even looking forward for
the hope that’s inside of that.
Yeah, and maybe it’s helpful,
Michael, to put some flesh on some of this symbolism.
You know, there are lots of disagreements about the book of Revelation,
but among those who study it,
there are some consensus,
I suppose, among certain scholars.
So when we see things like the great whore,
that’s Rome.
When we see Babylon,
that’s Rome.
When we read 666,
there’s a numbering system of Greek and Hebrew.
That’s Nero Caesar.
That’s Nero, almost 100% chance that the people read those numbers and said,
“Oh yeah, when you add up the
letters and the numerical equivalents of Nero Caesar,
guess what you get?
You get 666.
The some of these symbols and it helps,
I think, to understand what they mean.
The rider on the white horse,
that’s Jesus.
When you see the white robes,
that’s the save.
That’s those who have put on the righteousness of Christ.
Some of the symbolism gets in the way and I think it’s helpful if we
take a good guess of what it probably meant to those who read the book earliest.
And you need to remember that in some cases,
that was not just a shorthand for everyone and their cultural
understanding.
Some of that was safety.
We have that today.
You’ll get letters from missionaries
serving in places where Christianity is not a safe place for it to be practiced and they will
shorten words.
They will use different symbolic language to describe a thing that when you read
it as a Christian,
you know exactly what they’re saying.
But the truth is,
if you say death to
Caesar and you say that in those words,
that’s not going to be good for you.
But if you can say it
symbolically, if you can name these characters in ways that isn’t obvious,
that this is a much
safer way to be able to read and to pass along and to consume this book because you’re less likely
for that to end up with you arrested and then killed.
Yeah.
And keep in mind the central claim
of this book, God is ruler and the emperor isn’t.
That’s a dangerous thing to proclaim in the Roman Empire.
That’s the kind of thing that is getting people killed in this day and time.
I think especially as you near the end of Revelation,
you have to return to some of your comments earlier,
Clint, that it’s just absolutely astonishingly true how majestic,
how in control God is.
Your comment about God sending the angel to throw Satan into the abyss.
It’s that in spades.
The image of what the new heaven and the new earth will look like,
what it looks like for the judgment of those
who are both the living and the dead.
As you come to the end of Revelation,
you are reminded of a
thing that’s been true the entire time throughout the whole biblical account,
that God’s in charge,
that this is a story that we don’t see all the threads.
But if you saw the threads together
like God sees them,
it’s leading to a point.
There’s a meaning.
There’s more to this than just happenstance.
Life is more than just chance.
God is building a new reality,
even amidst people’s lives who receive this book,
who are in some places are crumbling.
Their lives are being destroyed.
So while their homes are being burned,
they’re reminded that there’s a heavenly home
that is constructed of undestroyable material,
perfect and eternal place of respite.
Yeah, and when you receive a message like Revelation and things are going well for you, it’s good news.
You’re glad for it.
But when you receive this book in the midst of pain and
struggle, this is the best news.
And so the proclamation in chapter 21,
the home of God
is with people.
And what will he do?
He’ll wipe tears from their eyes and death will be no more
and mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
For these, the first things have passed away.
It is profoundly important,
I think, that these early Christians envisioned God’s new world as a
place where the first thing God does is ease the pain of human life.
And then that gives way to eternal bliss.
I think we often start with the joy,
but it’s interesting that they start with the healing.
In fact, the tree later on heals the nations.
And of course, there’s 12 gates.
There’s every precious stone you can think of.
There’s gold that is somehow crystal clear,
which doesn’t even make sense.
I think it’s John’s way of saying it’s beyond whatever you can
imagine.
Whatever you can think of,
it’s immeasurably better than that.
You can’t conceive of how wonderful it is.
And I think one of my favorites,
Michael, is this idea that there is this innumerable multitude,
you know, that people from every tribe and every language.
Earlier, we’ve had the symbolic language of 144,000,
which is, I think, maybe the biggest number you can
write in Greek or something.
But right after that,
John says there was a countless multitude,
so that heaven’s not limited.
There’s not a certain number of spots.
It’s open to everyone,
from every tribe, from every nation, from every people, all of those who look to the Lamb,
and they come freely into the city.
They are rescued and redeemed.
An interesting thing that I found while reading this book was actually a little bit against what
I sometimes think about Revelation.
If you think about Revelation as an account of heaven,
you might think that within this book,
you would see more talk about what you believe.
As Christians, we often talk about heaven being connected to believe.
Well, do they believe in Jesus or not?
And so you might think that the idea of believing would be central in this book,
that belief is what gets you to that new heavenly city.
But what you find over and over and over
again in this book has nothing to do with what people believe and has everything to do with what
they do.
There is just charge after charge after charge to stay pure,
stay away from sexual
immorality.
Don’t go with the idolaters.
Don’t be with those who practice falsehoods.
Over and over the upshot of this book is watch what you’re doing.
Watch what you’re saying.
Live faithfully.
Be in community.
Don’t put others out.
These are the very themes we read in Paul and throughout
the rest of the New Testament.
And once again, we see them, except we see them now in a very different telling.
What we do is Christian matters.
And it actually has eternal significance.
It actually relates to even us seeing the eternal city.
So I think that was a thing that struck me
in my reading was that it’s not just about what you believe,
but it’s about what you do.
And that’s not something you might expect in the book of Revelation.
Yeah, I think it may help to remember
this book is written to believers.
And so it is an encouragement to them to persevere,
to stay on the path.
It’s not a coincidence that this book elevates the martyrs and the persecuted because
it comes to those who are being persecuted.
And it says to them,
“Stay the path that God is in
control, that God is above the earthly powers,
and that one day all will be set the way that
God wants it.
All will be made right.
All will be fulfilled.
And for eternity thereafter,
there will be praise, worship, and rejoicing,
peace,
joy, wholeness in ways that you can’t
even imagine.” And then even at the end of the book, you know,
wash your robes and stay away
from the evildoers and stay the path.
It’s unfortunate, Michael, that so much of the
attention given this book have been by people who do crazy things with it because it really is a
wonderful word to the church that at God’s doing and in God’s power and in God’s time,
God’s plans will be fulfilled.
And we need only be faithful while we wait.
Yeah, that’s great, Clint.
And, you know, you could have conversation about why Revelation ends up at the end.
Maybe on one hand,
there’s really no other spot that it fits.
It’s so different than everything that comes before it
that maybe you just got to stick it at the end.
Or maybe you look at the end of Revelation and you say,
“There’s no better ending to any book in the New Testament.” I mean,
when you think about where
the canon stops, where the end of your New Testament is,
these are powerful words.
He who
come,
Lord Jesus.
And then we see those very last words,
the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people.
Amen.
And I think you hear in those words a kind of finality like you don’t hear
in the other New Testament books.
Come, Lord Jesus.
To the person receiving this,
of course, that’s an invitation to remember that even in the midst of your present circumstance,
Christ who already lives is coming again,
that He’s coming.
He’s coming for you.
But as also lives for every generation of the church that’s received this book,
that’s received these words,
it’s not just words on a page,
ink that has dried.
This is an invitation to set our sights higher
than our present circumstance to align what we believe with what we do so that we might live our
lives in earnest expectation of the one who we believe is coming.
And if that is what you believe,
then this is the perfect place for the Scriptures to stop and for you to live.
Because that’s the moment where we set the moment in between Christ’s ascension and His soon coming return.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful picture,
Michael.
We spend so much time in the church and maybe in our lives
thinking of people coming to Christ,
of getting people to Christ,
of putting Christ in front of
people, of inviting people to come and experience the grace of Christ and the promise of God.
It is wonderfully fitting that the Scripture which supports all of that ends with a reminder
that ultimately Christ comes to us,
that the promise of God has come to rescue us and redeem
us and made us His own.
And I think that’s a good last word to remember that in our times of need
and in our times of struggle,
God sends Christ to be for us and sends Christ to us.
Friends, it has been a distinct pleasure to share this time with you as we have read through the
New Testament together.
At the end of this week’s reading,
you are going to come to the end of
Revelation and therefore the end of the New Testament and our 90-day New Testament project.
We hope that you have enjoyed it and been challenged by it.
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