Revelation chapter one with me this morning. We'll be taking a look just for a little bit out of a few chapters this morning in the book of Revelation. Not sure if God will send us back to this book. It's real, it's big enough in my heart to preach on it again tonight and continue, so we'll see if that be the will of God. So many people, Christians seem to want to stay away from the book of Revelation. They're scared of the book of Revelation. They read the book of Revelation, and when they read the book of Revelation, their hearts is full of fear of seeing all the judgment and the plagues that Almighty God brings upon the ungodly. They're upon the swirled. And as I think about the book of Revelation, I hope to give you a different insight that how you would read it, when you're reading it, what you'll look for when you're reading the book of Revelation. I would ask how many has never read the book of Revelation this morning, but I don't want to put you on the spot or embarrass you, but I would say to you, read the book. Read the book. It is the last book of this Bible. You need to read the book and at the end of it, it says the end. And if you read the book of Revelation and you're saved and you know God, even in the midst of all the judgment and all the tribulation that God pours out in that book, your heart should rejoice in the fact that you know Jesus Christ as your Savior. We find the book of Revelation. It's the book of Revelation that is preeminently His revelation. The revelation of Jesus Christ Himself. It's the revelation of His person. And it's the revelation of His glory. I read in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 7 that Paul gives the very words of Christ Himself. Christ said, lo, I come. In the volume of the book, it is written of me. to do thy will, O God. You may ask, what book is that, and what person is that? There's only one book, it's the Bible, amen? There's only one book, and the volume of the book, it is written of me to do thy will, O God. And there's only one person. the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who spoke that. And so in the volume of this book means you need to read the volume of the book, because it's all written about the Lord Jesus Christ. We understand this morning that the greatness that we have experienced singing about our flag, thinking about our country, singing our national anthem, singing about America the beautiful, all of that is possible in this country only because those who founded this country knew the Lord Jesus Christ. Love the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I read some stuff over the last couple days, some great sayings of our first president, and I'll not read those this morning, but he talked about the fear of the nation of America if she ever turned from God. If she ever turned, he would use the term religion, talking about the Bible. Religion in its purest form, there is a pure religion and undefiled before God the Father. And it's to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and keep yourself unspotted from the world. He said if man ever turned from the morality of Bible religion and began to turn to what he deems to be moral in and of himself, our nation shall crumble. And we're crumbling today. Because man's morality is left up to his own moral compass instead of the compass of the scripture. We find, as we would study or look at this book of Revelation, the whole book, the word of God bears witness of Jesus Christ. He is the living word of God. Matter of fact, when you study the volume of the book, he's the center of it. He's the sum of it. He's the totality of it. It's all about him, as we study this book. The entire substance of the Holy Scriptures is about our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. When you approach this book, by the way, this book is the book of all books. No book like it. Every word is truth. Every word is accurate. Every word should be believed, should be trusted. When you approach this book, you should approach it with one desire, to know Christ and to know him in all of his glory. When you approach this book and read it, it's not so you can attain knowledge. It's not just so you can argue with somebody. When you study this book and you read the volume of the book, read about the one who's the center of it. Read about the one who is the substance of it. You'll find him on every page of it. Every page, the totality and the sum and the entirety and the substance of this book is all about our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. When you read it, read it with a desire to know him. When you read it, read it with a desire to see him on every page. When you read it, friend, I'm telling you through the eyes of faith, you can see him in all of his glory. When I read about the Mount of Transfiguration, I wasn't there. I didn't see Jesus Christ transfigured in all of his glory, but when I'm reading about it, I can see it, friend. When I'm reading, when Peter sticks his foot in his mouth and say, let us make, you know, three tabernacles, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and let us make one for you, and when all the scene was cleared, he looked and there wasn't no Moses. There wasn't no Elijah. There was only the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who is the worthy one. He's the one that the volume of the book is written about. So we can see his blessed face on every page of this infallible book, God's book. The Holy Ghost and the Spirit of God never fails to satisfy the longing of the believer's heart who desires to know more about Christ Jesus, their Lord. The last book of this Bible is the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is him unveiling himself in all of his glory. That divine person, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. With that in mind, let's look at Revelation chapter one this morning. Revelation chapter one. Let's start reading in verse one. The Bible says the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now the title of the book is the revelation of Saint John the Divine. And there's some so-called Bible scholars that would try to tell you that the title of the book should not be The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, it should be The Revelation of Jesus Christ, but shall I remind you that God knows what he wants his books to be titled with. And though this is the revelation of Jesus Christ that will be revealed throughout this book, there's some things that God revealed to our brother Saint John as he ascends into heaven in the spirit on the Lord's day when the Lord calls him up. Three ways that you'll find the book of Revelation when you're studying it. We'll see it at the end of chapter one. The Lord tells John three things. He said, I want you to write down what you see. Write what you see, and oh boy, does he not see a lot. And thank God for what he saw, because it's written down for us about heaven and the throne of God in heaven. It's written down for us when Jesus loses the seals of the book, starting in chapter six in the book of Revelation, we get to see that book that no man in earth and heaven was worthy to lose the seals, but only the Lamb of God was worthy. And as it is revealed, he says, John, John, I want you to write the things that you see. And then he said, the second way the book is divided up, especially in the first three chapters, he said, John, I don't want you to write down the things you see, but I want you to write down the things which are, at that moment, present tense. And he writes to the seven churches which are, how God sees them, in their good and in their sin, and how they're pleasing him, and how God has a few things against them. And then he said, after that, I want you to write the things which are hereafter. And that's where most people, when they study the book of Revelation, they're always only wanting to see the things which are hereafter. They're not wanting to study it in the light of what John saw and the things that were at that moment, which those things that are, I'm gonna tell you, friend, are very irrelevant to things that are now. When he writes to the seven churches, there are literal seven churches in Asia that were churches that were preaching the gospel, and churches that lived in different areas in Asia, and the Lord began to rebuke them for their sin, their rebellion, their shortcomings, their idolatry, and he began to rebuke them because of their... changing their doctrine and becoming not sound in their doctrine, and then he began to praise them for good things that were in them. And if you'll study those seven churches, you'll find them relevant of church ages, but the doctrinal application is what was going on, the things that are. And what you'll find today, many people like to try to say that we are living in the late Laodicean church age. And in a whole, the church may be there, but I'm gonna tell you, friend, this church don't have to be a late Laodicean church. Hey, this church don't have to be an Ephesus church. This church don't have to be a Pergamos church. As you study the book of Revelation of the seven churches, there's only one church, the church of Philadelphia, that the Lord had the only negative thing that the Lord said about them is in context of them keeping his word, keeping his word, obeying his word, and right before that, here's what he said to them, the only negative thing, which is a big positive. thou hast little strength. but you've kept my word. Thou hast little strength. If that, and listen, when our strength is little and all we have, I'm gonna tell you what we do, we rest in his strength. And we're standing in his strength to strengthen the things which remain. And so there are things that are, that were written that are, that still are in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're all gonna meet him someday. We're gonna meet him. And when we meet him on the day of judgment, he knows everything about me and you. And here's what the blessing is, and I'm getting ahead of myself, but the blessing, when the Lord talks about the church in a whole. God deals with every one of these churches in a whole, however He rebukes them. But thank God in the midst of that, He'll talk about there's a few of you that aren't like that. There's a few of you that still, he said, though there's some of you that have a name that you live and you're dead, but there's some of you that have a name and you're living that name and you're faithful. I'm telling you, friend, many times inside churches, the church may be dead, the preacher may be dead, the preaching may be dead, but I'm telling you, friend, your relationship is left up between you and God. You won't stand someday and say, Lord, the church that I was going to, hey, friend, if it's dead, get out of it. If it's dead, get out of it, get in a place where the word of God is preached, where the Bible is lived. I'm not saying everybody in Gethsemane Baptist Church is perfect, but we ought to be striving to be. We should be striving to be. And so we find as he deals with these churches here in just a second, he says the revelation of Jesus Christ, verse one, which God gave to him, showing to his servants things which must shortly come to pass. I'm telling you, friend, it may have seemed like a long time, but God said these things are shortly coming to pass. In the mind of God, in the timetable of God, we have not reached yet since creation nine to the seventh day, if you study your Bible. We're still in that 6,000, we're moving to that 7,000th year, but before I get preaching on that, it's not the aspect I want to preach on this morning. To show unto his servants that things must shortly come to pass. and to set and signify it by his angel unto his servant John, who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy. those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand. Let me say something to you, there's only, I know, blessed if you read the whole book, every book in the Bible, but there's a particular blessing that God said that you're blessed if you'll read this book, the book that John wrote, the book of Revelation. If you've never read it, read it. If you've never read it, I'm telling you, read every single word of this book, the book of Revelation. How many of you will be honest and say, man, I read the book of Revelation and phew, well, that scares me. Come on, I've been there. I've read and I said, oh, dear God. You do not want to be on the receiving end of the wrath of God. You do not want to be on the receiving end of the judgment of God. Let me say this, when God pours his wrath out on this earth in the book of Revelation, when he does it, the world, you know what they say? What a hate monger of a God. What an angry God, what a horrible God, what a cruel God. I'm telling you, friend, before God ever gets to the place he pours out his judgment, he has sent out floods and droves of mercy for thousands of years in this earth. Mercy has been flowing. Grace has been flowing. Long-suffering has been flowing. And when you see God pouring out his judgment, can I tell you that when he does, the angels of God in heaven, you know what they say? Thou art righteous. Thou art just. Thou art worthy. And they magnify the Lord, and they worship the Lord, and they praise the Lord, and they say, Thou art holy. You don't know why, friend, those angels been observing the wickedness of man for thousands of years. They know exactly what's been going on. They are the messengers of the Lord, running to and fro and observing and seeing and doing. The angels of God are not sitting up in heaven in golden hammocks, sitting back sleeping, sipping on glorified lemonade. You know how you find them in the book of Revelation? Ministering in and out the temple. Boy, they're operating in that priesthood in heaven. And these angels, an innumerable company of angels. Innumerable, you can't count them. You know what you'll find in the book of Revelation when all the angels of God are standing around? Maybe show you that tonight. There's a place in there where they are singing, and all the redeemed of God are singing, and the angels are singing, and they're praising God, and when they do, all of them, listen, all the host of heaven and every single angel literally falls down and worships him that sits on the throne, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. So what I hope to do this morning, trying to do, is put in perspective your mind right now, your savior. Sometimes we live, oh Jesus, yes, he's sitting in heaven. Jesus, we leave him back there, he's the guy that died on the cross. Some of you teenagers in here, some of you young people, even say you're saved, you just, you know, Jesus, yes, he died on the cross, and yes, Jesus, he lives in my heart, and yes, I know I'm supposed to serve him, but sometimes you do and sometimes you don't, and you don't keep in your mind him in all of his glory, Him in all of His person, Him in all of His divinity, and the fact that He is trying to live in your life every single moment of your life. He's trying to be glorified in you. He's trying to be glorified in you, and it's sad. Well, sometimes you can just take church or leave it. Maybe I'll go Sunday, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll go Wednesday, or maybe I won't. Maybe, you know, maybe I'll just be a Sunday morning 11 o'clock Christian. Oh, that's all I'll do. I'll just, and that's enough. I'm gonna tell you, you have lost light. You have lost sight and light of the one who saved you. I don't believe church is optional, I believe it's essential. I need it, I must have it. You know what God has ordained? God has ordained in his word for believers to meet this fashion. I don't know about you, man. I mean, just seeing you today has done my heart good. Shaking your hand and hugging some of you's men's neck and talking to you and hearing what's going on in your life and just rejoicing together, singing together, worshiping together. I mean, God has given us togetherness. There is nothing else in this world that is a, anything else is a cheap substitute for this. Ball games. I mean, boy, you can just start listing the list. It's a cheap substitute for this. Matter of fact, there is no substitute for this. Thank God for the church of the living God. the church that he died for. And so we see that John is bearing record of these things, things which he saw. There's a blessing if you read this book. John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace, verse four, from him which is. He's not a God who just was, he's a God who is. The Lord Jesus was not just the one who came 2,000 years ago. He is a present God at this moment, a present Savior, observing your life, beholding the good and the evil, sitting in heaven right now, interested in your life personally, trying to do something in your life this morning. God wants to do more with you than you want him to. I just want God to use me. God said that's exactly what I want to do. I just want the blessings of God in my life. Oh, that's why I'm trying to get you to obey my word, so I can pour my blessings into your life. God wants to do more with you than you realize he wants to. He does. I promise you this morning, young people, God wants to do something great in your life. The Lord Jesus wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to bless you. He wants to do great things in your life. You know what the problem is with people that I see in these last days? Well, there's a lack of commitment. A lack of commitment? A lack of commitment to the Lord? A lack of commitment to his word? A lack of commitment to his church? We never, ever, ever, ever dreamed when the new emerging church, so-called, came out, and these non-denominational, these contemporary churches, when they started having Sunday morning services, only one service, we thought, what in the world? Oh boy, the independent Baptists never go that way. You better take another look. Hey, you better take another look. And I know that we do the fifth Sunday thing, the fifth Sunday, the months that have five Sundays on that Sunday night, we try to have a big day on that Sunday morning, but I'm telling you this, you mark it down on your calendar right now. As long as Pastor Steve, you mark it down that I said it and you can hold it against me. As long as I'm the pastor and this is my watch of Gethsemane Baptist Church, we won't only be having Sunday morning services only as long as I'm the pastor. Oh man, I'm looking for, well, you in the wrong church. We'll still be meeting on Wednesday nights because we need that midweek service. And I know that you can come together and pray, but oh, they're just about singing and worshiping on that Wednesday night. It's something about getting preached to on that Wednesday night. I'm talking about preach to, you know what happens, I'm talking about, you know, we can gather together and we can pray. You know what happens most of the time when people are praying even in a prayer room? They're not even listening to somebody who's praying. Even if somebody else is praying, they're not, and if they are and they think they may get called on, I don't know about you, many times I'm thinking about what I'm gonna pray when they're done. Trying to formulate what I'm gonna pray. I'm not underestimating the power of prayer, but I'm telling you, there's just something about God's people meeting together, worshiping together, There's no substitute for it. A week ago, and there's times that with what happened with COVID that we had to meet outside and we had to just come and I stood, I promise you this, it is not pleasant. You know how many times I stood in this pulpit with nobody sitting out there? Nobody. and I'm preaching to you on GGR radio, trying to preach from all I'm worth, and I've got my, and times my wife was sitting out there, and my kids were sitting out there, but there was times that I was, and listen, try to just preach to your wife and kids sometime with the empty church. They're like. Right? Instead of amen, they're like. And try to hold it together, and you don't see that, right? And they're coming in like, Dad, I mean, we've sang, and our family would come and gather around this mic, and we would sing, try to sing a hymn with him, you sing at home, and they're like, okay, we're gonna turn our phone on just like everybody else, we're going home and listen to you on GGR Radio, and I'm like, no, you're not. They're like, why not? and standing up here with a Bible and preaching to an empty pews and trying to get you in my mind and preach to you at your house and some of you thought enough about it to listen and after a little while, here's what happens when you don't go to church and you're not in church, all of a sudden you go, oh, it's Sunday. Oh, the pastor's preaching and you don't miss half of it. And then there's people that stayed away long enough that I talked to them and I said, you know, last Sunday when I, and they say they're listening on GGR, and I said, you know, last Sunday when I was preaching, so and so, and they look at you like you got four heads. And I said, oh, you didn't listen last Sunday? They're like, oh, no, no, no, we weren't able to listen. I said, okay, remember the Sunday before when I, and they're like. You know what I realized? They're not listening. Boy, the danger of slipping. I'm not saying everybody does. Not saying everybody does. But I'm saying it's in the nature of man to slip if you're not committed. Commitment. You know what commitment is? Hanging on after others have let go. That's what commitment is. You're in there. And we need a generation that's committed to God, committed to the things of the Lord, committed to the Bible. And the only way that's gonna happen is if you're committed to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That's where it must start. If you're committed to him, I believe you'll be committed to the church. So he writes to the seven churches. He said to him, which is and was, and thank God for this promise, and which is to come from the seven spirits which are before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness. and the first begotten of the dead, you know what John is, the opening of the book talks about who he is, it talks about his death, it talks about him being the first begotten, it talks about him, if he was dead, begotten from the dead, you know what it's talking about is resurrection. Talks about the resurrection savior, begotten from the dead, and he's the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins, say it with me, in his own blood. You know what he's talking about? Calvary. Fix and read about them talking about piercing him. First chapter of the book of Revelation. Before he gets to things that are hereafter, before he gets to the prophecies of hereafter, he's reminding you who he is and his redemptive work. And you'll see him and you'll see that all the way through the book. Even in the midst of God's judgment, you'll see God's mercies. God's mercies. And when God brings judgment, and you know, God uses judgment in people's lives to get their attention and turn them from the error of their way. How many of you, because of trouble, turn to God? When you got in trouble, come on now, I'm telling you. My dad would tell you, our testimony, when God put his finger in our family's life and began to cause trouble is when my dad said, I better get to church. I better get right with God. I better get my family in church. And when things got bad, there was only one place to look. When God makes you so low that all you can do is look up, you look unto him. How many of you, because of trouble, you said, boy, I need the Lord, and I need to go to church, and you can run wild, and you can be the, how about the prodigal? As long as he had money and everything was wonderful, he didn't come to himself. That's when he got in the hog pen, and the friends left him. and everybody's gone, and he would fain fill his belly with a husk that these pigs are eating, and even as a Jewish young man, he wouldn't even eat pig, much less feed pigs, much less be in a pen with a pig. The boy's pen has brought him low, and he got to that low place where everything fell apart in his life. He said, oh, my father's house. I've sinned against heaven. See, his first thing he realized, before you can ever get right this way, you gotta get right this way. and the cross will help you do that. Before you can get right across the pew, before you can get right with man, you must get right with God. Realize your offense is with God. As long as you see your sin is only against the individual, you can maybe just deal with it. But if you see that sin's against God, it brings true repentance. Not the sorrow of the world, but godly sorrow, which worketh repentance. Works repentance. We'll put a quick plug in here this morning. I was going to at the end of Brother, it's not in the book of Revelation, but it's in the message, okay? Brother Brandon was preaching. He was talking about that envy this morning. He was talking to Brother Baker about it after church. That envy. Envy. Spirit that sent us lusted for envy. And I pulled Brother Brandon aside. I said, let me tell you something, brother, as a young preacher, let me just as a pastor, I don't know what God's gonna do in your life someday, but let me tell you as a pastor, the problems that have been in Gethsemane since I pastored over the years, And thank God they've not been problems like other churches have had problems. But we've had our problems. It has not been because envy, people envying the possessions of others. That really hasn't seemed to cause a rift so much in the church. It's when people envy positions of others. As Brother Baker said to me this morning, he said, there's a difference between jealousy and envy. He said, I can have a jealousy for what God's using you for, but that jealousy, I have to be careful it doesn't become envy, that jealousy make me want to get with God and do what I'm supposed to so God can put his hand on me and use me, not take your place, but use me like God's using you. But here's what envy, envy gets to the place that envy is rottenness to the bones. I mean, it just eats away and it forms that enmity and that hatred. Here's what envy does. I thought about the verse this morning. I'll tell you what I told Brother Brandon. Envy does, Israel envied Moses, a man of God. They envied him. What does that mean? They didn't envy his tent. They didn't envy his camels. You know what they envied? His position. They said, we're just as holy as you are. We know God like you do. Who made you ruler over us? And Moses said, wait a minute, I didn't put myself here, God put me here. I didn't choose this. Matter of fact, I ran from it. God put me here. And what happens that I have seen in places in the church, and I'll give you just a couple examples, where envy, when people begin, and Brother Brandon was preaching that about that pride, God gives grace to the humble, he resisted the proud. When people look at positions somebody else has, or somebody else was asked to do something, or somebody else was given something, and you say, why wasn't I asked? Why wasn't that given to me? Why didn't they ask me to do that? You know what had that envy? That envy is the fact that you envy the other person that God put his hand on, that God is using. You want to know why God didn't ask you to do that? Because God probably let me know as a pastor, even though I didn't know how you were and your spirit was, that God doesn't want an individual that thinks they deserve it and ought to be there being there. In other words, a right spirit would come and say, you know, pastor, boy, what a blessing God's used so and so doing that. And I have a desire to be, boy, I'm praying for them. I love the fact that God's using them there. But I just want you to know that if you ever see any way that I can be used of God, I want you to know I just want to be used. And I love you, preacher. And if God doesn't tell you to, then I realize it ain't the Lord that wants me to do that. That's the right kind of spirit. I was talking to a preacher just the other day, and I won't tell you who he is, but there was a situation happened at his church. Here's an example of envy. A situation that happened at his church that there was a man who was a youth pastor for 35 years. And this preacher said, boy, that guy should have been removed a long time ago from that position just because he wasn't relevant. to being the youth pastor. And God puts another man on his heart to bring in a seasoned preacher to take that position. And he went to this man that's about 70 years older, over 70, that's the youth pastor. How many of y'all that are 70 think you can keep up with the youth? I'm checking out, I'm thinking 70 maybe not even pastoring anymore, right? Much less being the youth pastor. And so he went to the man and told him, boy, I thank you how God has used you and God has blessed you and all you've done for the church over the years. He said, God has led me this way. You've run your course. There's other things that God's gonna use you here. I'm thinking about how God's gonna use you in a big way. He said, but here's what I want you to know. God has put on my heart to bring another man in to take this youth thing over right now and God's gonna use you in a different capacity. We're gonna have a plaque for you. We're gonna put it up in the church. We're gonna honor you. the kids are gonna write things to you, we're gonna have the whole service thanking you for all the years that you did, kinda send it around, you're gonna have a fellowship afterward. Guy never came back to church. Never showed back up. Let me tell you how individual, that's why I said to the preacher too, here's how an individual is measured. By not what you give them, it's by what you don't give them that you'll see what they really are. It's by not what you give them, but what you may take from them that you'll see the real character in that individual. Pride, boy, envy's a nasty thing. Envy is horrible. It's terrible. It's prideful. And I've had issues, had no idea was going here this morning, but here's where we are. Listen to me. I've had issues when people have approached me with a bad spirit. How come you didn't ask me to do that? How come you didn't ask me to participate in that? And they weren't coming with the right spirit saying, boy, I'd love to be a part. They're upset somebody else got to do it. And that is exactly why God didn't let you do it. Let me say it aloud. That is exactly why God didn't let you do it. I say that in love. God does not use that kind of spirit in his ministry. He doesn't. And so envy, that spirit, we all lust at the envy. You know what we have to do? With the spirit of God, humble ourselves under his mighty hand that he may exalt us in due time. That's God's way. It's God's way. Envy. Yes, the scripture does not say in vain. Brother Brandon, the scripture does not say in vain that the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy. It's horrible. I'll tell you what envy is. we'll pick up here tonight, Envy is, there's these, in the islands, there's these white crabs and blue land crabs. They're white and blue. And what happens, you can put them in a cage, and you put them in a cage together. What happens if you put them in a cage together, and then you can put them Separate or together and what happens when they're climbing that you can leave the top off the cage Not a you can leave the top off. There's not one single crab will ever get out It's not because they don't have the ability to it's not because they can't they climb right up and climb out What happens they'll climb up and they'll climb up on each other's back and when they get to the top? The next one following instead of just climbing and helping each other out will reach up grab that other clock crab and throw him down in the cage and And when that crab reaches the top, the next crab grabs him and they'll do it all day long. And they'll never get out! That's what envy is. Yeah, you're getting out. I don't want you to get out, because I want to get out, and you're staying here. Boy, envy's a nasty thing. Nasty. When it runs its sway and threads itself on the church of the living God, it will destroy the very thing that God is building. It will destroy it. God's way down, God's way up is always down. Humility, humbleness, humbleness, humbleness. God knows your heart and God knows where you're at. God knows how to exalt you in due time if God wants to exalt you. God knows and God will if you have the right spirit, I promise you. God will if you have the right spirit. Every head bowed, every eye closed.