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And so let us hear then the word
of our God. Revelation chapter one, verse
10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's
day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet saying,
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. And what
you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches
which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira,
to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea. Then I turned to
see the voice that spoke with me, and having turned, I saw
seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven
lampstands, one, like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment
down to the feet, and girded about the chest with a golden
band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as
snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like brass,
fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice is the
sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven
stars, out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and
his countenance was like the sun shining in its brilliance,
in its strength here. Sorry, different translation
in my mind. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand on
me, saying to me, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last.
I am he who lives and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of
Hades and of death. Write the things which you have
seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take
place after this. The mystery of the seven stars
which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands.
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the
seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches. The grass
withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Amen. As we begin here today,
I want us to think of the times where maybe we've been watching
a movie or reading a book, and we go to a different place. And
sometimes when we are done, all of a sudden we're like, oh yeah,
I'm sitting on my couch or whatever it is. And this idea of being
taken somewhere to see something, to hear something, to read about
something, Well, in a somewhat general sense, that's what's
happening with John. He is going to be taken to see
things, to hear things, and we see that described for us here
in verse 10. We initially concluded the opening
section in verses 1 to 8, and we saw in verse 8 God speaking
to us. Whether it's the Father or the
Son, God is speaking to us, and it brings words of comfort. Since
God is eternal, since God is in control of all things, all
events of history, this indicates to us that any tribulations that
we are facing now are not random, and they are not beyond God's
plan and purpose. Then we transition to the first
main section, verses nine through 20. And John first identifies
himself and identifies himself with us, saying that he is a
fellow believer, a brother and companion. He says that we share
together in three things, the hardships of life, as well as
being part of the kingdom. We have power and authority to
stand against sin and evil, even when we're oppressed by those
earthly and evil powers. And then thirdly, he says that
we share in patience. This isn't just something we
do individually, but as believers, we share together in these hardships,
in this ruling, and we patiently persevered together amidst the
struggles, overcoming them as kings as we are united to Christ. And we also saw John telling
us that he was on the island of Patmos as a political prisoner
for proclaiming the gospel. At the very least, he was banished
there and not allowed to leave. He may have been imprisoned and
even forced to do hard labor. There is No clarity in the text
here, and church tradition and other traditions are mixed on
what that was like for him. But whatever the case, he's on
the island, and now, as we see, he's gonna receive this opening
vision. And so, verse 10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's
day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet. All right, now first of all,
we have, if you will, vision-like language, and then we're gonna
have something a bit more everyday in the second part. But there
are three main things here in this verse, and the first one
is in the spirit. John uses this language four
times here in the book, and let's look at them briefly. Here's
the first one. Let's turn to chapter four, and if you look
at verse two, He says, immediately I was in the spirit and behold,
a throne set in heaven and one sat on the throne. Now he doesn't
specifically say he was taken to the heavenly throne, but that's
obviously the implication, right? And then if you turn to chapter
17, the third occurrence is here. Chapter 17, and if you look at
verse 3, he says, so he carried me away in the spirit into the
wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on
a scarlet beast and so on and so forth. So you see here the
connection with Babylon and so forth. And if you look at chapter
21 and verse 10, So here you have two that clearly
say John was taken by the Spirit somewhere. into the wilderness, or in this
case, into the new heavens and the new earth, seeing the heavenly
Jerusalem. The implication is that was the
case in chapter 4, that He was taken into the heavenly throne
room. And here, it appears like we should assume the same, that
He is taken to where Jesus is. And the Spirit leads him there.
And one of the reasons why we think this is because of the
connections, not only here in the text, but also to the Old
Testament. Let's turn here a moment to Ezekiel now. And first of
all, let's look at chapter 8. Chapter 8 here in Ezekiel. All right, look here a moment
then at verse three. You'll see there in verse one,
it's the sixth year, okay? He's in exile, right? And he
looks, he sees this likeness, this appearance. We'll talk more
about that appearance, Lord willing, next time. And then now verse
three, he stretched out the form of a hand and took me by the
lock. by a lock of my hair and the spirit lifted me up between
earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem
to the door of the north gate of the inner court and so forth
here okay note the the the glory of the Lord is there you see
the presence of God So here with Ezekiel, he is taken by the spirit. Now, not literally, he was not
taken from Babylon to Jerusalem, literally, but in the spirit,
through this vision. And notice, we see the presence
of God here. For John, chapter four, it's
the presence of God. In chapter 21, it's the presence
of God. And now, of course, here in chapter
one as well. Let's turn also then to Ezekiel
chapter 11. Remember chapter 10, the glory
of God departs from the temple, and now here in chapter 11, note
verse 1. Then the Spirit lifted me up
and brought me to the east gate of the Lord's house, which faces
eastward, and there at the door of the gate were 25 men, and
He keeps going. Verse 5, the Spirit of the Lord
fell upon me and said to me, Speak, and so forth. If you look
at verse 24 at the end of the chapter, then the Spirit took
me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea
to those in captivity. So, you know, he's not jumping
on an airplane or a helicopter or not being teleported somewhere,
you know, whatever. But by the Spirit, he is led
to these different places by way of vision. Whatever that
exactly means, I don't think we can say definitively. But
this is a real event for Ezekiel. Now we see the same kind of thing
here for John. Some describe it as a kind of
ecstasy, which, okay, fine, just as long as we keep LSD out of
it. We're talking about the Spirit who is leading him in this very
unusual way. He's given spiritual sight, spiritual
meaning. He's in his right mind. This
is not a dream, but it is a vision that includes transportation
to some degree here, whatever exactly that means here for us. So he's led by the Spirit, filled
with the Spirit here in this way. Obviously, this is not John's
doing. This isn't Ezekiel's doing. It's
the work of the Spirit. And so it is highly unique. This
is not like, if you will, a normal prophet receiving a word from
the Lord. This is a vision in this specific
way. This is not like the Urim and
Thummim where you have light and dark stones and that somehow
communicates a yes or no answer that the Lord is leading. It's
not the imagination station at wit's end either. This is an
actual event. Can you say it's sort of like
a movie that is shown to John? We are left with many questions,
but this really happened. All right, well, let's look now
here in Revelation 1 at the next part of the verse. He says this
happened on the Lord's Day. Now, let me touch on this topic
here just a little bit this morning. The Lord's Day here is a reference,
of course, to Sunday. The implication here is that
John is worshiping. It doesn't specifically say that,
but It certainly makes sense that that would have been the
case. He, at the very least, would have been praying. Maybe he was
worshiping. Maybe there were other people
with him. We don't know exactly. Depends on how much freedom he
had there on the island. But it says here that this took
place on the Lord's Day. Now, let me go down this path
a little bit farther. This is the first time in the
historical record that we have, at this point anyway, that this
is called the Lord's Day. 50 years later, by the mid-second
century, you see it everywhere. And so the first time this language
is used is here, but the idea of worshiping on Sunday appears
to have taken place prior to this. We have some hints of this. So let's turn here just briefly,
first of all, to the book of John. and chapter 20. You remember here we see the
resurrection of Christ and he appears to Mary and then to the
apostles. Now remember you had the Passover
and then you had a week of unleavened bread and they would meet together
and have some holy convocations and so forth and so it makes
sense there you see verse 19 the first day of the week this
is right in the middle of all that. All right. Remember, of
course, Thomas is not there. So if you look then farther to
verse 26, after eight days, the disciples were again inside and
Thomas was with them. If we count the first day and
the last day, which is likely how we should do this, it's the
first day of the week again. Why would they meet on the first
day of the week? The feast is over. Do you see the implication? The
implication is they're meeting, not just gathered together, but
for worship. Remember, they were given the
message to go back to Jerusalem, or excuse me, to Galilee. So
why are they still there? So it doesn't give us clarity,
but it does give us a hint. If you turn to Acts chapter 20,
and here this is when Paul's on his third missionary journey.
He has just written the book to the Romans and is now heading
to Jerusalem, and of course, he's arrested there and so forth.
But along the way, you see in verse seven, he stops at Troas,
and it says, on the first day of the week, when the disciples
came together to break bread, Paul, right, he speaks, and the
guy falls out the window, because he falls asleep and so forth,
right? But again, why are you gonna meet on the first day of
the week? Well, you could say, it's just because that's when
Paul came through. But it does seem also to suggest this is
the day they're meeting for worship. Let's turn then to 1 Corinthians
chapter 16, and our last one here in this
way. 1 Corinthians 16, we have another hint. Verse 2, Paul says,
on the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something
aside, storing up as he may prosper, and there be no collections when
I come. Remember, Paul is on his third missionary journey
here. He's gonna come to Corinth, so this is before Acts 20, before
he writes the book of Romans. And he says, look, when I come,
hey, don't make the collections at that point, I already do it,
so that I can take it back to Jerusalem right away, and so
forth, right? Now, again, you see the implication. Why meet on the first day of
the week if you're gonna meet the day before on the Sabbath,
if that's your day of worship? And normally the first day of
the week would be a day of work. So it doesn't say it specifically,
but it does hint at the idea that the early church was already
starting to worship on Sundays. And they did so, of course, because
Jesus rose from the dead on Sundays. And so there is some suggestion
in the historical record that the early church worshiped on
Saturday and Sunday initially. And also some suggestion that
by the time you come to the fall of Jerusalem, they no longer
worshiped on Saturdays. It was only done on Sundays.
So we have hints, we have suggestions, but again, here in Revelation
1, this is the first time it specifically calls it the Lord's
day. So what this means then is that
all the commands from the fourth commandment apply now to Sunday. We're not doing away with the
fourth commandment. We're just changing the day. So prior to
this, of course, you have the creation pattern. It was all
done on the last day of the week. But now here at Christ's resurrection,
it's done on the first day of the week. And so all the commands
of not working, not causing other people to work, of setting it
aside for worship and rest, all of that is still in place now.
And so if we work on the Lord's day, unless it's necessity and
mercy as a biblical standard here, then we're telling people
we're trying to work our way to heaven. And we're not being
kind to others if we cause them to work and so forth. Now, just
a couple other brief points here. Some people have tried to make
the case that we should translate this not as Lord's Day, but Day
of the Lord. Now let me just say here very
briefly, the Greek does not allow us to do that. This is not a
genitive case construction, it's a regular adjective. And you
cannot translate it, the day of the Lord. It must be translated
the Lord's day. There is no indication anywhere
in the Septuagint, the New Testament, the early church of translating
it as the day of the Lord. And so for those who say, oh,
look, there's this eschatological trumpet here in the verse, right?
And John is taken to the second coming, that doesn't fit. It's saying,
I was worshiping on the Lord's day and this is what happened. And then one more point, and
that has to do with a polemic. Remember, a polemic is, you've
heard this said, but that's not true. This is what is true. So
in the first century, there was something called Emperor's Day,
the Lord's Day. And they did it once a month,
typically, where they would worship Caesar. And so by calling it
now the Lord's Day, it in part is a polemic against the pagan
kings and focusing on the true king. But also, it does seem
to be a polemic against the Sabbath-only kind of people. The seventh day
of the week, that has now been set aside. It now has become
a day of work, and the first day of the week is now our day
of rest and worship. And the reason why the change
has come is pretty simple. Prior to Christ's coming, we
look forward to his coming. We would work all week, and we
look forward to the rest that he would provide. Now that he
has come, we look backward to the first day of the week. We
rest first, and then we work the rest of the week. And this
follows this pattern of Christ's coming. Now certainly, we still
look for his second coming. But here in this weekly way,
we look backward in particular. All right, well, this is a rather
involved discussion and you have some people who insist we still
should worship on Saturday, but by the middle of the second century,
nobody did. There's no indication of that
at all. So, it was all Sunday. So anyway, let's now look at
the third point here in the verse. John now says, I heard behind
me a loud voice as of a trumpet. Now, as we'll see in verse 12,
he's going to turn to see this voice, which tells us that he
is not merely seeing things. It's not a silent movie kind
of thing here, but he's hearing things as well. So what we would
say is he has a vision and an audition, but we're not auditioning
for a choir or an orchestra, but he is hearing things in his
visions. And he says that this voice was
behind him. So in verse 12, we're going to
see him turn. We are told here that this voice
is a loud voice. In other words, it's clear. It's
unmistakable. It is powerful. It is divine. In fact, loud voice is found
20 times in the book, plus a few more. They don't say it exactly
that way, but are still communicating the same point. And so here John
is not hearing a whisper, okay, like Elijah heard, the still
small voice, but he hears a loud voice. And he describes it as
being like a trumpet. He did not hear a trumpet. He
heard a voice like a trumpet. Note the simile here. Now, when
we think of trumpets today, we think of an orchestra, or maybe
a marching band, or something like that. In that day, when
they would hear a trumpet, it was usually in the context of
three things, either the heralding of a king's arrival or some important
person, or a trumpet that would be used during battle to help
give direction for what was going on, or thirdly, to call people
to worship. And so those would be the three
primary ways. Now you do see evidence of them
using trumpets in a musical sense there in the Psalms, but primarily
it is to get people's attention. Now for us today, we might think
of the church bell calling everybody to worship. Or we might think
of the sirens as the motorcade of the president goes down the
Pennsylvania Avenue or something like that. And so think of something
that's really loud. That's the image here. So again,
he's not hearing a trumpet, but a voice that's loud like one.
Not surprisingly, There are Old Testament connections to this
as well. So let's turn to Ezekiel chapter
3 and turn to the passage that we read earlier. And as I indicated
to you when we read it, the connections with our passage do not fit with
the overall message of the chapter. But we do see some of these,
if you will, more minor connections at this point. And so here in
chapter three, of course, we see about him eating the scroll
and so forth. And if you look at verse 12 in
particular, and the spirit lifted me up and I heard behind me a
great thunderous voice, blessed is the glory of the Lord from
his place. So notice focusing on God's presence. So the spirit is taking him,
he's hearing this voice, we see the presence of God referenced
there. Verse 14, the spirit lifted me
up and took me away, and so forth. So, the connection here with
Revelation is, again, intentional. If you turn a moment to Exodus
chapter 19, we do have a connection here in this way with an actual
trumpet sound, a trumpet blast. And this is when Israel, of course,
came to Mount Sinai, and God is ready to speak, and they had
to prepare themselves. Remember, we looked at verse
six a few weeks ago about being a kingdom of priests. So verse
16, it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there
were thunderings and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain,
and the sound of a trumpet was very loud, so that all the people
who were in the camp trembled. Verse 19, when the blast of the
trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke,
and God answered him by voice, and he came down on the mountain.
So note again here now, this is an actual trumpet, but note
the loudness of it again, and note the presence of God. So
as we've seen things in Ezekiel, and we see this here, and we
compare it to first, excuse me, to Revelation 1, we see some
of these same kinds of ideas. God is bringing John by the Spirit
into this place, wherever it is, and he's seeing this vision,
and right away we see this loudness of the voice. All right, so let's
look then at verse 11. And a couple things to mention
here about this verse. First of all, let's read it,
and notice there's probably some differences if you have another
translation. Verse 11, saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last, and what you see, write in a book and
send it to the seven churches, which are in Asia, to Ephesus,
to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and
to Laodicea. All right. You know, verse 10,
you're like, well, how does that apply to me? Well, the Lord's
Day applies to us, but the rest of it, like, well, that's not
gonna happen to me, right? This happened to John. Well, now here
in verse 11, it's a much more, if you will, personal. because
we're receiving a message, and we'll see that, of course, in
chapters 2 and 3. Now, the verse begins, if you
have the Old King James or the New King James, you include the
names, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. If you
don't have one of those translations, you don't have those things,
because all the other manuscripts do not have the names. But remember
what we saw in verse eight, the alpha and the omega, and we'll
see in verse 17, the first and the last, we know that these
names are legitimate names. So the only question we're dealing
with here is, did John actually write it in verse 11? And really
our conclusion needs to be, he did not. Somebody added it in
later. But the point of the names are
just as relevant here as they are in verse eight and in verse
17. And that is, Jesus is the all-sovereign God. He is governing
all of history, and He now is telling John to write these things
to these churches. Alright, now notice then, the
next part of the verse says, what you see, write. So far, in verse 10, it's only
been what he heard. But now he is told what you see
in this vision, write it down. And notice then the two commands,
to write in a book, and secondly, send it to the seven churches.
As for writing it down, 12 times in the book of Revelation, John
is commanded to do this. And there's only two times in
the rest of the whole New Testament that anybody is commanded to
write something. This is very much specific to
what God is doing here with John in the book of Revelation. He
has commanded what you see, what you hear, write it down. And
we, of course, are thankful that he did. This then doesn't only
apply to verses 12 to 20, but to the whole book, because, again,
we see it over and over again. And so he is writing down what
he sees. Now the question for us is, how
did he do that? Did he receive this vision and
then write it down right away? And then did he get another vision
a few weeks later and write it down right away? Did all the
visions happen at once and then he wrote it down? We don't know
some of that. But he's commanded to write,
and he did, led by the Spirit. And so here's what we are to
know. All right, now, secondly, then, he is to send what he has
written to these churches. Now, notice, it isn't merely
chapter 2, verses 1 to 7, that message goes to Ephesus. Chapter
2, 8 to 11, that message goes to Smyrna. But all of what's
here in the book is to be sent to the churches, including those
messages, but more than that. As I mentioned before here, look
at chapter two, verse seven. He who is in ear, let him hear
what the Spirit says to the churches. So it isn't just a message for
Ephesus, it's a message for all the churches. And so the whole book would have
been sent to every one of these churches, most likely one copy
that circulated around and so forth. Now notice then, we come
to the number seven again, just like we saw back in verse four
with the seven spirits. So now, here again, we see it,
seven churches, and we're gonna see the seven stars and all that
as well. Seven, of course, is a number
of, a symbolic number that points to fullness and completion. Now here, again, is a little
difference. In the New King James and the
Old King James, it says about the seven churches which are
in Asia. Your translation may not have
in Asia. But do you know what Harrisville
was called 300 years ago? I don't either. Okay. So imagine
you're 300 years after John, and some people are like, now
where was Laodicea again? I've heard about that. So somebody
adding this in at some future time makes some sense, and it's
probably what happened, but John didn't have it initially, according
to the manuscripts. But anyway, he is gonna write
it to these churches. Now let me add one more thing
here before we talk about the churches. Notice he is not to send this
letter to Jerusalem or even to Antioch, but he's to send it
to these churches. This is another clue, a hint,
that this is after the fall of Jerusalem. Prior to the fall
of Jerusalem, right, everything was centered around Jerusalem.
Things were shifting, but still, right, Paul kept going back to
Jerusalem. We have the Jerusalem Council
and so on and so forth. It was the center of the church.
But after the fall of Jerusalem, that was no longer the case.
And the first center of the church afterward was in Asia Minor.
So it's no surprise, then, we see these seven churches here
in this area and not in Judea. Now, of course, later, it shifted
further west to Rome. and so forth, and of course you
have the Eastern and Western Church. All right, now here's
where I want you to look at your map again, and I know I've called
our attention to this before, and so maybe you can recall it,
but if you look here on the map, you'll notice now these seven
churches, and we start with Ephesus. And if you have an imagination
here, think of a clock and go clockwise. It's not very round,
but note the clockwise direction of these churches. In order,
it's from Ephesus, north to Smyrna, then to Pergamum, and then to
the southeast, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. This
is the order of the churches that are listed here and in chapters
two and three. And so again, note this very
general clockwise direction here for these places. Now, as for
these places, Church tradition says that John, after he fled
Jerusalem at the fall time frame, went here and actually was in
Ephesus. And this was his locus of authority
and oversight. Some have even said John oversaw
all seven of these churches, but that's not clear. But what
is clear is that these cities were prominent cities at the
time. And for those of you coming in Sunday school and been watching
these videos, you can see that. Today we talked about Pergamos.
And it was the key city in Asia Minor for a long time. And then Ephesus took over that
and was the key city at the time of John here. But all these cities
were prominent. They were political centers,
they were judicial centers, and they were centers for mail. So
USPS and FedEx and all that, right? This is where they would
go, and then they would send out their mail from there. But
these were seven key places in the first century, so it makes
sense that the letter here would go to these places because of
their importance and centrality in this way. As I've mentioned
in the past, remember, we know there were other churches. So
it wasn't just these seven. but these are the ones that are
chosen. Now, because God only chose seven, we must understand
them then as representative of the other churches in the area
and even of other churches in church history. So we take our
symbolic number seven, we also take just the reality of only
seven and the fact that we know others were there. And so the
message, for example, to Laodicea it would probably be a very similar
message to the church in Colossae, because they're basically right
next door. The letter to the church in Pergamum may have been
very similar if a letter were written to the church in Troas,
because again, they're not that far apart. And so these seven
churches have a representative message. Oh yeah, it was real
for them, it was for them, but it also has some application
to the other churches. And as we continue throughout
church history then, The way we should understand this is
that the messages to these seven churches are messages to us. Now it may be that our church
is most like, you know, whatever one it is, but we need to take
the message to these seven churches and see how it does apply to
us. And so that's what we will be doing when we get to chapters
two and three. How does the message to the church
in Ephesus apply to Rocky Springs? or the church in Smyrna, the
message there, and so forth, okay? And so, again, seven here
gives us the symbolic understanding, and this is how we're going to
apply it. So we're not just gonna say, oh, this is for those churches,
and it has nothing to do with us. No, we're going to learn from
it. All right, so let's look now
at verse 12. Then I turned to see the voice
that spoke with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. Remember John, verse 10, he heard
it behind him, so now he's turning, and he hears a voice, now he's
gonna see a voice. How do you see a voice? It's
kinda like seeing the wind. But the point here, obviously,
is that he is seeing the person who is speaking. And so notice
that we have here this poetic device being used. Some people
will say it's a synecdoche, some will say it's a metonymy here,
but either way you go, you get the idea that the voice is representing
the whole person. And so it's referring to the
person speaking. But before we talk about the person speaking,
notice our attention is drawn to what John sees first. And
that is the lampstands. The person is in the midst of
the lampstands, obscured to some degree by the lampstands. And
so our attention is drawn here first. And so let's make our connections here
then in this way. So let's turn again to some of
our Old Testament connections. Let's turn first to Exodus chapter
25. The first time we see a reference
to the lampstand, obviously, is in the building of the tabernacle.
In our reading of Leviticus here a little bit ago, we saw about
Aaron taking care, excuse me, of the lampstand, the continual
burning of the lampstand. But here in chapter 25, you'll
see especially verses 31 and following, you shall also make
a lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand shall be of hammered
work, its shaft, branches, bowls, knobs, and so on and so forth,
right? So it's not wood overlaid with gold, it's solid gold. And
the lampstand has seven lights all together, right? The branches,
three off each side, and the one in the middle. And so this
is to represent, in part, the light, the light that shines
in the tabernacle so that we can see. But there's one of them here.
Let's turn then to 1 Kings 7. Here now is where Solomon builds
the temple. And like everything Solomon did,
he went overboard. And here, there's not just one
lampstand, but if you look at 1 Kings 7 verse 49, here near
the end of the chapter, verse 49, the lampstands of pure gold,
five on the right side and five on the left in front of the inner
sanctuary with the flowers of lamps, the wick trimmers of gold,
and so on and so forth. So there's not just one lampstand,
there are 10 of them. Five on each side and presumably
they all had seven lights. So we've got 70 lights not just
seven here now in the temple. Let's turn next then to Zechariah
chapter 4. And of course we have made reference
to this passage a few times now already in our study of Revelation. And in Zechariah 4 You remember
that the angel shows Zechariah these things. No, verse two.
He said to me, what do you see? So I said, I'm looking and there's
a lampstand of solid gold with a bowl on top of it. And on the
stand, seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps. Two
olive trees are by it, one on the right of the bowl and the
other is left, and so on. So you have these olive trees
pouring in the oil, so it's burning continually. But note, there's
one lampstand. Okay, seven lights with the one
lampstand. And you remember the context
here is that the Spirit is going to strengthen Zerubbabel to finish
the building of the temple after the exile. So you have one lampstand
in the tabernacle, one lampstand here in the temple after the
exile. There are ten lampstands in the
Temple of Solomon, and now seven lampstands here in Revelation
1. So, Remember what I was saying before?
It seems like the spirit took John somewhere here in this vision.
It doesn't specifically say, but presumably he is taken to
the heavenly temple, similar to chapter four and chapter 21. So, the lampstand then is our
emphasis, and it gives light, and if I can give a bit of a
spoiler here, Okay, to finish our time this morning, the explanation
of what this is is given to us in verse 20. But let me give
us some understanding here now so that we can kind of round
out what's going on here. The lampstand, of course, represents
the church. It represents individual believers.
It represents the church as a whole. It represents the place of worship.
And so here is Jesus in the midst of the churches, this place of
worship. Jesus is the light of the world,
but the emphasis here is we are the light of the world. You remember
the teaching of Jesus in Matthew chapter five that specifically
says that, right? You don't light a lamp and cover
it. It's like a city on the hill
and so forth, right? Remember those words. And so
here we have this image of the church. As the spirit strengthens
Zerubbabel to rebuild the church, the temple at the time, in the
midst of their opposition, so the same spirit, remember the
seven spirits, are going to strengthen us to shine the light of truth
even in the midst of our hardships. And so here's John on an island,
at the very least exiled if not imprisoned. And yet the spirit
comes to him and he gives him these visions. So in the same
way, whatever hardships we face, it's not going to hinder the
work of God through the church to spread the light of the truth.
We have one of the greatest books in all the Bible in the midst
of someone who is suffering and exiled. And so notice part of
what's the message is here, here in this way. And let me give
you one last thought then. Remember Jesus, of course, died
and rose and ascended around 30 AD. Here now is John receiving
this vision around 95 AD, so 65 years later. Now we might
not think this was all that big a deal, but But Jesus said he's
going to come back soon and they've been waiting for 65 years and
he hasn't come yet. What's going on? Why hasn't he
come yet? Did we misunderstand him? Did
something happen? Are we doing something wrongly?
You know, these kinds of things they're asking themselves. Do
you see what the message is going to tell us? Again, a bit of a
spoiler here, but do you see what the message is? In the midst
of our suffering, the Church of God is still standing, and
Jesus is still with us. We may not see him, and of course,
from our perspective, it's now 2,000 years since he left, but
he's with us. And so do you see how this is
leading to these words of comfort? We are the lampstand, the church
of Jesus Christ. We are to shine the light. And
this is going to lead to opposition. It's going to lead to suffering.
But Jesus is with us. He is the first and the last.
He is the one who was, who is, who is to come. He is with us. And as we'll see next time, we'll
see this description of who he is. And all that is to bring
us comfort. Because Jesus is not being waylaid
because, you know, Satan has the upper hand or something.
No, he's with us and he will return at the right time. And
so as we are waiting, let us shine the light of the truth,
remembering that Christ is with us in our midst. So since we have to subdivide
this to get at all the different words and ideas, I'm giving you
a little bit of a foretaste of what the final message is here
in this opening vision. So we'll stop here today and
we'll pick up with this with the image of Christ in verses
13 and following here next time. Let's pray together. Our Father
in God, we thank you for your word and how you've preserved
things here for us. We thank you for that command
you gave to John to write and to send, and that we now have
this message. We thank you, Lord, that we see
in it the message of comfort and encouragement. We thank you,
Lord, that you have made us lampstands and you have given us the responsibility
to shine light Help us as we face our hardships, and remember
that you are always with us, right in our midst, even as we
may wait another 2,000 years for your return. And so, Lord,
we pray that as we meet here on this Lord's Day, that your
name is lifted up. And we thank you, Lord, that
your presence is here with us by your spirit, that seven spirits,
And we praise you, Lord, that we have the same message and
promises that you gave to John for those early Christians. And
may this then guide us as we seek to live for you here today.
And so we pray all these things then in Jesus' name. Amen.
John’s First Vision – Spiritual Sight and Hearing
Series Revelation
| Sermon ID | 102124172015345 |
| Duration | 45:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Revelation 1:10-12 |
| Language | English |
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