The book is called in Greek the Apocalypse, Apocalypse. Scary word, maybe. Hollywood films use the title and even the X-Men as a character called by this name, and they are terrifying. But the book shouldn't be. Reading a novel now takes place in the reign of Henry VIII, a murder mystery. The murder mystery is called Revelation. And in that mystery, this book is called evil and violent and wicked. That's not how we read the book. Because by the end of this story in Revelation, what happens? There is a vast multitude of human beings from, quote, every tribe and tongue and language and people, and they are gathered together, too many to count, before the throne of God and of the Lamb, praising God and the Lamb for the redemption and the reclaiming, the restoration that God has done to our world. And we have by the end, the last two pages, the renewal of heaven and earth, and the Holy of Holies Maybe you know that that was a perfect cube way back in the days of Moses. 10 cubits by 10 cubits by 10. A cubit is 15 feet. All right. Pretty small cube. Maybe you know that in Solomon's temple, the Holy of Holies was doubled in size. 20 by 20 by 20 cubits. All right. About 30 feet. Smaller than this room. Well, except for the height. But maybe you know that in the New Jerusalem, Measured in chapter 21 of Revelation, it's 12,000 stadia by 12,000 stadia by 12,000 stadia, and it's the holy of holies now immense, and the human race redeemed, well, not all of us, but nonetheless, vast number of the human race redeemed now lives face to face with God in a vastly expanded holy of holies called the New Jerusalem. wonderful symbol of final redemption, the only perfect cube in the New Testament. That is, the end of this book is glorious, and it's vast human salvation in the mercy of God. And how does the book begin? To Him who has loved us and has freed us from our sins. and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve his God and Father. To him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen." That's the first page. That is, the book begins with the glory of heavenly mercy through Jesus and ends with the victory of that glorious mercy through Jesus, and the final form of the book is mercy which has been triumphant, and in which evil is vanquished forever, and the good and holy kingdom of God victorious on earth as it is in heaven, which we pray every day in the Lord's Prayer. Your kingdom come, where? On earth. Your will be done where? On earth as it is in heaven. God will win, not just in heaven, He will win on earth. And that's wonderfully good news. Is there resistance? Oh, sure. Will there be searching judgments? Oh, yes. Will there be people who are cast out into the outer darkness? Oh, yeah, that's true too. But the bottom line is massive mercy. And that should be great comfort to all of us. The word apocalypse does not mean disaster, despite what Hollywood does and the X-Men. The word apocalypse means unveiling or disclosing. Apocalypto is the verb, apocalypsis, the noun in Greek. And if I were, say, Michelangelo, the great sculptor, maybe I've made some great statue, maybe the great David that's now on display somewhere in Florence, which I have never seen. And maybe the day of its public dedication, it's covered in a sheet and the time comes and the artist pulls the cord and suddenly there is David. in glorious marble, 13 feet high on a pedestal, even, you know, and everyone is in awe at the wonder of the art. That pulling of the cord is, in Greek, an apocalypsis, an unveiling, a disclosing, an opening of what was once hidden. That's what the word apocalypse means. And notice the title of the book, The Revelation of Jesus That's not Michelangelo's David that we're talking about. It's the revelation, the unveiling of Jesus. It is also the unveiling from Jesus. And our text in the opening line says that God gave it to Him to show His servants, which will soon take place. And later on in that chapter, we see that some things have already taken place, and some are taking place now, and some will take place. And so we have past, present, and future in the book. And the end of that future, that goal, is the glorious kingdom of God in which the boundary line between heaven and earth now becomes basically irrelevant. And the new Jerusalem is coming down from God out of heaven onto the earth. The 12,000 stadia thing, by the way, how big is 12,000 stadia? That's 1,500 miles in literal terms. A stadium is a Roman measure, a little bit longer than American football field by another 100 feet or so. But 12,000 stadia takes you literally from Jerusalem to Rome. But we shouldn't think in literal terms here. We should think in good symbolic number because the number is not just 12. the number of the people of God, the tribes of Israel, but is 12,000, and 12,000 times 10, 12,000 times 12,000, which means the massive number of the people of God, now included in what was once the tiny holy, a holy of holies, where only the high priest could go once a year. He bore the names of the tribes on him in those jeweled, the gemstones of his breastplate. He symbolized all the people of God. But in the symbol of the 12,000 times 12,000 times 12,000, it's all the people of God who now live face to face with God. And that's glorious. And that's the next last page of the book. And the book ends with invitation. The spirit of the bride say, come. And the one who thirsts, let him come and drink of the waters of life. Come, come, says the last page of the book. The book is beautiful. And so we have something called the apocalypse, an opening, an unveiling, and it opens heaven to us, and it opens us to heaven, when we read it rightly, it opens us to the glorious one, Jesus Christ, who is revealed in this first page in glory and in power and in mercy. Jesus Christ, who is identified within the book persistently as the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, phrases that also pertain to God the Father in the book. So the same phrases that pertain to the Father pertain to the Son, and the Son is therefore rightly worshiped as God within this book. And so the book is an opening. It opens us to heaven. It opens heaven to us. It opens us to Christ. Again, the three terms in glory, in power, and mercy. Now when we read the book, we understand that it's in something like a letter form. Did you notice John to the seven churches that are in Asia? That's letter form when we read the Pauline letters. You know, Paul puts his name first, right? And then we have Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the saints who are in, say, Ephesus and who are faithful. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Typical opening of a Pauline letter. We have that 14 times in the New Testament, that kind of phrasing, and the last time is here. In Revelation chapter one, it's letter form, but wait, the book is also called a prophecy. And we have a blessing upon the one who reads out loud the book. Hey, so I feel pretty good today. And also a blessing upon those who hear the reading of the book. So I hope that you feel pretty good too. And of course that blessing is upon those who take it to heart. And so, blessed the one who reads aloud, blessed those who hear and take it to heart, because the time is near. That is, the book is pertinent to John's readers way back then in 90-something A.D. when the book is written, and it's still pertinent to us. And it comes from the one who is, and who was, and who is to come, and addresses that which is, and that which was, and that which is to come. And so the book is a prophecy. an authoritative declaration by a spokesperson for God with some degree of prediction. It's also identified as an apocalypse, which is a peculiar form of prophetic lit. We have it in the Old Testament elsewhere only in Daniel in complete form. Other books have elements of it. But scholars since the 1970s have identified apocalypses as having basically four things in them, four attributes which identify them. It's a revelatory story with highly symbolic dreams and visions which must be interpreted, and often they are interpreted by means of an angel or some other heavenly figure. So a story through vision or symbol or dream mediated by a heavenly figure, typically an angel, and the subject? the victory of God over earth now, for some of these apocalyptic passages, and the victory of God over evil on earth in future. And apocalypses tend to be written when the people of God are most desperate. Book of Daniel, what's the context there? Yeah, Babylonian exile. And Daniel, a teenage boy taken from Jerusalem in 605 BC, Jerusalem will stand a little while longer and then be destroyed in 587, and the rest of Daniel's life under Babylonian power, and by the end, under Persian power. And there seems to be no hope for the restoration of a kingdom of God upon earth. But what's the message of these two apocalypses? Well, I can summarize it from Revelation 11, verse 15. And if you know the music of Handel's Messiah, this is part of the Hallelujah Chorus. Has anyone ever sung the Hallelujah Chorus? All right, a few hands go up so you know these words. This is Revelation 11, verse 15. It's sung by the saints and angels when the seventh trumpet sounds. And in Revelation, there are seven trumpets sounding warning, so the seventh trumpet is the last trumpet. And in the New Testament, the last trumpet is the one that signals final salvation, final judgment, the end of our present frame of history, not the end of the world, but the end of the world as I know it, and I feel fine. You know that lyric from R.E.M.? Okay, the end of the world as I know it. That is, the end of our present frame where evil happens. But then a whole new frame of life in history and time where evil will not happen. It's not the end of the world. It's the apocalypse, but it's not the end of the world. It's only the end of the world as we know it. And we'll feel fine. And so, in Revelation 11, 15, long introduction to that verse, the kingdoms of the world have become. Now, if you sung Handel's Messiah, maybe you got the whole thing memorized. Maybe you can say it with me. The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign. How long? Forever and ever, okay, then we go into the whole forever and ever business of the hallelujah chorus. It's Revelation 11, 15, which is the theme verse of both the book of Daniel, well, not the theme verse of Daniel, but the theme of Daniel and the theme verse of the book of Revelation. That is the glory of the reign of Christ, which is a reign of mercy. So to Him who has loved us and has freed us from our sins and has made us to be a kingdom, priest, to serve as God and Father, to Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. The book is a letter. The book is a prophecy. The book is an apocalypse. And the book opens heaven to us. and opens us to heaven. Have you noticed the prevalence of sevens in the book? We've got seven spirits mentioned on that first page, seven letters, seven churches, later on seven seals on a scroll, after the seven seals, which are chapters 6 through 8, seven trumpets, which are chapters 8 through 11, and then with chapters 15 and 16, seven bowls of wrath, all kinds of seven stuff. And hidden within the book is the name Christ seven times. And the name Jesus, 7 times 2, 14 times. And the word Lamb as Lamb of God, that is the Christ Himself as the sacrificed Lord, the Lamb of God, 7 times 4, 28 times. And God and the Lamb, that phrase, 7 times, and all that's meant to be. Those numbers are intentional. The writer is putting that into the book so that we understand that the book is principally a revelation of Christ and His mercy as the Lamb of God sent by God the Father, that the world might be saved. And that makes the book beautiful. Yeah, there are terrifying things in it, especially those seven bowls of wrath. They're meant to work repentance. But when we think of Christ as the Lamb, what do we know? Another sentence also written by this John, but in a different book. John chapter one, verse 29. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. And so in chapter 5, John is already in heaven. He's been kind of carried up there in vision. A door is open in chapter 4 verse 1. Come up here, says a voice. Suddenly, John is in heaven, and he sees the throne room, and on the throne is the one who lives forever, the Almighty, and in His hand is a great scroll sealed with seven seals. And heaven weeps because no one is found worthy to take the book or open its seals. John himself weeps. Stop weeping, says the angel. The lion of the tribe of Judah has revealed, and he is worthy to take the book and open its seals. And John turns around to find a lion, but what does he find? A lamb standing, though slain. And the lamb is the lion. We expect God to be wrathful, we expect Jesus to be the lion who tears his claws at sinners and devours them, but instead we find the Lamb of God standing as slain, says the Greek text. Standing meaning resurrected, slain, crucified, simultaneously displayed this way, standing as slain, and He is the one who opens the book of destiny. A book whose seals, broken one by one, shows the victory of Christ over all the powers of evil. Seven letters, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls of wrath, seven spirits. Let's go there for a moment. Notice the text, verse four, graced you in peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. Well, let me do that one first. That phrase is derived from Exodus 3, the burning bush story, where God reveals himself to Moses as the great I am, the Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton. That divine name comes out of that story. And we have the bizarre sentence, Eheah, Asher, Eheah, I am that I am. But the verbs can also be translated future. I will be what I will be. And the what or the that in the middle of that, the asher word could mean because, I am because I am, that is, I exist by my own power. I think that's what the sentence principally means. But we have out of that I am the eternity of God, the one who is, says our text. But since He is, He also was. And since He was, He also will be. And so the Father is described as the one who is and who was and who is to come. And then we have the bizarre statement about the seven spirits. About 30 years ago, that silly televangelist who dresses in the white suits, Benny Hinn, you ever watch that guy? Oh, my, what a trip. Yeah, okay. He once said there were nine members of the Trinity. How did he get nine? Well, seven plus two. He was working on this text. Nine members of the Trinity. His fellow televangelists knew that that wouldn't fly. So he finally had to retry. He said it was revealed to him. There are nine of them, he says. It was revealed to me. Yeah, false prophet, if ever there was one. Oh my. All right, so not nine members of the Trinity. Why seven spirits in this text? Here's why. Because in Isaiah 11, the Holy Spirit rests upon the Messiah, and he is the spirit of sevenfold grace, sevenfold wisdom, seven virtues by which the Messiah judges, not by what he sees, but by a heavenly wisdom that never fails. And so the sevenfold spirit is a metaphor from Isaiah chapter 11. the seven virtues of the Holy Spirit as it abides upon the Christ, as he abides upon the Christ. And in the book of Zechariah, the seven candles of the lampstand in Zechariah 4 are described as the seven eyes of the Lord which range to and fro in all the earth, which are identified as the Spirit later in that book. And so the symbol of seven does not mean seven individual persons, but rather the sevenfold perfection of the spirit. And those who have eyes to see know that that is what the saying means. So this is John's unusual expression of the Holy Spirit, who is singular, but perfect. And we see throughout the Bible, the number seven is the number of holiness and perfection. Not seven individual spirits, but the Holy Spirit, who is one. But wait, one further wrinkle here, because there are seven churches and seven lampstands in our story, right? And the Holy Spirit is distributed to the congregations of the Church of Jesus and abides in every one of them. And so this is also the abiding Holy Spirit who is here and at Vito Presbyterian Church where your pastor is preaching and in every other true church of Jesus at this very moment as the saints of God gather. In this particular book, seven cities, seven churches, seven lampstands, and hence the abiding Holy Spirit under that number seven. You see how it actually is easy and not hard to interpret the symbols of the book. And so we have then a Trinitarian blessing, graced you in peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from Jesus Christ, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ. Now, let's find out how Jesus is described in the book. Notice in verse five, he's called the faithful witness. Now, in Greek, the word witness is martyria, and the testimony or faithful witness that is a true witness at a courtroom, martyria. And those who give true witness are martyr in Greek. Not long after this, the word martyr will be applied to those who die for their faith. That is not yet true in New Testament Greek. It will become true about a hundred years later in early Christian Greek that martyr becomes the word for those who die for the faith. But in the meantime, here Jesus is described as the witness, that is, the one who bears true testimony. He's also described as the faithful witness, that is, he does not waver. His truth is always. Yeah, true. Capital T. And he's also called the firstborn from the dead. What in the world does that mean? Well, of course, there were a few who came back from the dead before Easter Sunday. Elisha brings a boy back, way back in the stories in Kings. Jesus brings Lazarus back, John chapter 11, but they will die again. They did. They did die again. Did you notice how Jesus introduces Himself in this page? I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever. When we speak, or when John speaks of Jesus as the firstborn from the dead, what he means is that He is the first of a whole new order of life and blessedness in which death is no more. And so within our text, He bears the key of death. master over it, liberator of those who are in death. He bears the key of death and of Hades, the grave, the power of death. And he gains these by his own resurrection from the dead, which unlike Lazarus's and unlike that boy in the days of Elisha, does not result in death again, but an everlasting life, not only for himself, But as the firstborn, the first of many brothers and sisters who themselves will inherit that resurrected life in a glory beyond all that we can imagine, in which all that we are now we will be yet again, yet without sin or weakness or pain or trouble, and in a greater glory like the glory of his body, which, yes, walks through walls and defies the laws of physics, And who knows what adventures we're going to have in that perfected state when evil is no more. I imagine all kinds of wonderful adventures for you. I don't know what they are, but all kinds of wonderful adventures are yet to be ours in that resurrected life that is yet to come when evil is vanquished and God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, when I was a boy and rebellious, I demanded my name be taken off the church roll because I was going to be a good unbeliever. My mother winced when I made that request. I was 13 or 14. Yeah, I was going to be a good Darwinian, I was going to be the next Darwin maybe, and do Darwin's deeds better than Darwin ever did, and I was not a Christian and did not want to be a Christian, and the last thing in the world I wanted to be was a Christian pastor. Yeah, God's laughing at me. So one summer I resolved with a friend that we would become intellectually fulfilled unbelievers by reading the New Testament and therefore rejecting Christianity from its very root. I read all the New Testament that summer. I was working at Boy Scout camp and washing dishes and being miserable, and at night, reading the New Testament, and I read all of Revelation in maybe two nights, and I was done. My main thought after reading that book was, weird book, and I was done with the New Testament. Well, not long after that, in the mercy of God, this particular idiot was led to the light, and I was shocked one day to discover that I actually had believed this thing called the New Testament. It's like I was kicked awake and said, kid, you're in. Wake up. You're in. I was astonished to discover that I believed the message of the New Testament. So the following summer, I went back to the New Testament. And there I am sitting in my grandmother's kitchen in Lewis, Delaware, one June or July, and I had gotten myself a fine study Bible of the King James Version and a guidebook, which was highly recommended. And I sat down at the kitchen table that morning and said to God, I'm going to become a serious student of the Bible. So I opened my Bible and opened the book. The book's title, you might know, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, published in 1970, and a lot to do with the book of Revelation. And in that book, notice the title, The Late Great Planet, that is, Earth dies and is thrown away in the book. Yeah, Earth dies and is thrown away. The Late Great Planet Earth, there's a funeral for the world, so to speak, and the planet is thrown away. So I was taught to read the book as essentially a book of disaster. a funeral for the universe, in which God saved a bit out of it, namely our bodies. So the only surviving matter is the body of Christ and the bodies of Christians. The rest is trashed. Cosmic incinerator, because it's the late great planet Earth. That's not how you read the book. Notice that in this text, Jesus is called not just the firstborn from the dead, but the ruler of the kings of the earth. But as the kings of the earth, by the end of this book, yes, some of them will be judged, but some will be converted and will enter into the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem. And it is not the role of a ruler of a realm to destroy his realm, even when it is rebellious. It is the role of a ruler to reconquer his rebellious realm and bring it into right order. And so that title of that book and that author misconstrued the book of Revelation massively. Again, what happens in Revelation 11 verse 15? The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. That is, the reign of God is not only in heaven by that wonderful announcement, also upon earth. And the prayer of Jesus, which we pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, that prayer is fulfilled by that passage. And so we ought not to speak about a late, great planet. but the renewal of heaven and earth, the renewal of the universe, and a mercy that is massive. God is good. And in this book, we see not only the glory and the power of Jesus Christ, but we see the mercy of Christ. What is the book about? the glory of the mercy of Christ, which by the end is massive. Now the disciples one day asked Jesus a question, Lord, are there a few who shall be saved? Remember the question? Now Jesus loves questions. He asked a whole lot of them himself, and those questions are often quite searching. At one point, he asked the Pharisees a question, and Matthew tells us that after that, no one dared ask him any more questions. They were befuddled by it. Matthew 22, for that story, go ahead and read it. All right. So, Lord, are there few who shall be saved? Now, Jesus is wise and wily. Astute interpreters understand that Jesus in the reply never answers the question. He never answers whether there are few or many. Instead, he says this, strive to enter the narrow gate. That is, whether it's few or many, the real issue for you is not whether few or many, but that you enter the narrow gate, that you be saved, that you respond to the heavenly call of mercy and become one of the members of the people of God, that holy people that is called here a kingdom and priest to serve His God and Father. And when John calls us priests, we have to remember now that the function of a priest in that ancient world is to intercede for those who were not yet reconciled to their Creator. That is the status in chapter 1 of the people of God, of the Christians, of those who are believing and repentant in this gospel. What is their status? Yes, they are a kingdom, but they are priests, and priests are mediators. to reconcile those who were not yet reconciled. By chapter 10, the two witnesses are martyred. Those witnesses symbolize the whole witness of the church in all its ages. And when those witnesses are martyred, the world in vastness repents. And that sets the setting for the seventh trumpet which is the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of our Lord. Jesus says it this way, this gospel of the kingdom must be preached as a testimony among all nations. And then the end will come. That is, until the gospel is fully preached everywhere, Jesus delays His return. The whole world must hear the message. Why? Because the elect are everywhere. Who knows who they are? Even very wicked people, murderers, blasphemers. Oh yeah, St. Paul was that. Even people like us. Amazing, huh? Yeah, even the likes of us have been invited in by the mercy of God. And so what is our book? It is a book, an opening, an opening of heaven to earth An opening of the glorious One Christ and His power, His glory, His mercy, the Christ who is the Almighty God, who is and who was and who is to come, the ruler of the kings of the earth. An opening of earth to heaven and heaven to earth. And an opening of our hearts to see, at least by words, to see. this glorious Christ in his mercy for us and for the world. Peter tells us that mercy triumphs over judgment. Remember that sentence? A proverb quoted by Peter, mercy triumphs over judgment. The proverb does not mean that there is no judgment. There it is. But God takes great delight in mercy. And so we see Jesus not just in glory and power. Yeah, that's true. If that were all that were true, we'd be in trouble. But we see in this book Jesus in glory and in power and in mercy. And Jesus directs his glorious power for mercy to multitudes so that by the end people from every tribe and tongue and language and people will gather before his throne with their palm branches singing glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And so this book is a book of faith that we believe in this Christ. This book is a book of hope. because we know the last page of our present frame of history. We know it. And this book is a book of love, that we might love the beauty of this Christ who has loved us and has freed us from our sins. Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before you with love, with adoration, with wonder, at your mercy to us. You, of course, are the glorious one, the powerful one. You hold all power. And yet you use that power for kindness, for redemptive love. And you buy us back by your own blood. So bless us then with this faith and this hope and this love, that we persevere in this faith, that we exercise this hope, this confidence that these things are indeed true, and that we respond then with love not only to you, but also to the estranged, to the persecuted, to the wicked, to the unbeliever, that many, many, many will be folded into that final kingdom on that great and last day. Hear our prayer, Lord Jesus, presented before the throne of your Father by the power of your Holy Spirit. And we ask these things of you most gratefully. Amen.