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You can either follow along in
your Bibles or page 19, reading the first three verses from the
majority text of Revelation chapter 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave him to show to his slaves, things that must
occur shortly. And he signified it, sending
it by his angel to his slave John, who gave witness to the
word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. The things that
he saw, both things that are and those that must happen after
these. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words
of the prophecy and keep the things that are written in it
because the time is near. Father we thank you for these
words that were written long ago and for the certainty of
the fulfillment of those promises that happened in the first century
and all of the lessons that we can learn from this of your sovereignty
over all of the the fact that your word holds even nations
accountable to your lordship. And we pray that as we continue
to dig into some of the foundational principles that you have laid
in these first few verses, that it would help us in understanding
the rest of the book. Do bless this time, we pray in
Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we've been going through
John's preface to this book to understand what kind of a book
it is and how we should approach this book so that we can have
the maximum benefit from it. And you can kind of think of
these 30 principles that we'll be going through as rules of
interpretation, or you can simply think of them as the presuppositions
that were in John's mind as he wrote this book. But I struggled
and struggled with this book over the past 30 years. And it
was only as I began understanding these principles that the book
opened up in a brand new way to me. And I'm going to give
you just a bit of review of where we've been so far. The first
two words, the revelation. Revelation means an unveiling. This book unveils what could
not be otherwise seen. And there are huge implications
of that word. should do away with all skepticism
that we might have about whether we can understand this book or
not. We can. He has unveiled it for us. Second, it is an unveiling
of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. So we are seeing things about
His glorious heavenly kingdom we might not otherwise notice,
but it's about what He is doing in history more than it is about
what the beast is doing or any other creature in that book.
Third, it is an inspired book revealing God's very words. This isn't something that John
came up with. It says here, these words are
words which God gave him to show to his slaves. Fourth, we saw
that this is not intended to be a communication to the academics
in our midst, you know, only people who have esoteric interests,
you know, and weird scriptures. No, this was intended for all
of his slaves, for you, for me. This was to be accessible to
all. And the word slaves, by the way,
has a number of other implications, such as his lordship, his lordship
overall. Fifth, the word show completely
rules out the idea that this is a mystery book akin to Gnostic
literature, the way some commentaries take it. He's not hiding a thing. He's showing this to everyone,
to all of his slaves. Sixth, this book deals with history. It's not just about ideas. There
are some approaches to this book like idealism that say, you know,
there aren't any historical periods where these things are going
to be actually fulfilled. This is just general ideas. that
you might apply in any given age, but he says here that he's
revealing things that must occur shortly. That's history. And
then the word must indicates what kind of history. It's providential
history. You might think History is controlled
by, you know, some secret groups, the Illuminati, or it's controlled
by Satan or something else. But this makes it very clear,
history is controlled by God. And these are the things that
show his lordship over all of history. The eighth point can
be seen in the word shortly. That word shows that the bulk
of this book actually deals with events that either happened or
started to happen within weeks or at least within months of
this book having been written. And that's reiterated again in
verse 3 where he says, for the time is near. Not 2,000 years
later, like a bunch of commentaries have it, near. And then the ninth
principle can be seen in the word signified. And we saw that
the Greek word there deals with to communicate by means of symbols. And so it's a book that is chock
full of symbols. And so we spent the entire time
last week looking at the biblical rules of prophetic literature,
which is symbolic literature. How do you interpret these symbols?
And we saw that both literal and symbolic are held together
in this book in a very neat way. And we won't repeat what we looked
at last week. Now that brings us up to principle
number 10 in your outlines. Principle 10 is that we must
see the role of angels as being critically important in world
history. Now I found it very interesting
as I was reading through the commentaries, a lot of my commentaries
did not utter a single word about the word angel. They just completely
skipped over that. And most of the commentaries
didn't say a whole lot about that. And I suppose that some
evangelicals, certainly a lot of lay people, think it's odd
to be inserting an idea about an angel when you're talking
about the giving of God's revelation of inspiration. But verse 1 says,
he sent and communicated it or signified it by his angel to
his slave John. There was an angel that was involved
in the giving of this message. So the angel is sent by Jesus,
the angel communicates. So the order that's given in
verses 1 through 2 is that the father has a revelation that
he gives to Jesus, Jesus gives this revelation to an angel,
the angel gives that revelation to John, and then John communicates
that revelation to the church. And there is one person that's
not mentioned in verses 1 through 2, but he is mentioned in verses
4 and 10, and that is the role of the Holy Spirit. Verse 10
says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. What does that
mean? Well, the Holy Spirit indwelt his prophets to enable them to
infallibly receive the communication from God and be able to infallibly
communicate that revelation to others. He's not doing this on
his own. It says he is in the Spirit. And so 2 Peter 1, verse 21 says,
prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke
as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Okay, so inspiration
of the Holy Spirit enables those prophets to receive revelation
infallibly, to communicate that revelation without error. But
for this point, I'm not dealing so much with the role of the
Holy Spirit as I am with the role of angels. There are a lot
of evangelicals out there that if you read any of their books
dealing with revelation, angels don't factor in at all. And they
think that that is a bit odd here. But let me show you how
angels were involved over and over again in the giving of the
Bible to us. Concerning the Law of Moses on
Mount Sinai, Galatians 3 verse 19 says the law was appointed
through angels by the hand of a mediator. And it wasn't just
that angels happened to be present. Hebrews 2 says that the law given
on Mount Sinai, it says, for if the word spoken through angels
proved steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just
reward. So he's talking about the case
law of the Old Testament. And he said that case law was
spoken through angels. Very interesting language. And
by the way, Meredith Klein's book that I had mentioned before,
Images of the Spirit, he points out that that glory cloud in
the wilderness that Moses interacted with, with God in, as a friend
face to face, that was a theophany of God, but he also points out
that it was filled with millions of angels, many times when their
wings were stirring, making incredible sounds, sounds that we're going
to be hearing repeated, in the book of Revelation. Anyway, Deuteronomy
33 verse 2 says that there were tens of thousands of angels who
were helping with the giving of the law to Moses. How it happened,
we're not told. But somehow they are involved.
Acts 7 verse 53 says that the law was, quote, received by the
direction of angels. Now the same was true of other
prophecies. An angel was somehow involved in Daniel's great prophecies
of the four beasts in Daniel chapter 7, as well as in the
vision of the ram and the goat in chapter 8, and the vision
of the 70 weeks in chapter 9, and the glorious vision of chapters
10 through 11. Angels are mentioned in connection
with the prophecies in Zechariah and Ezekiel. and it makes sense
really because the word angel literally means messenger. So
there are invisible messengers of heaven that serve God's purposes,
then there are human messengers on the earth that serve God's
purposes, and the same word angolos is used of both of them and this
inter change between the heavenly angels and the earthly angels,
the messengers, is intertwined in ways that I think many modern
people have forgotten about, or at least downplay a great
deal. We're not used to thinking of angels as being much involved
in anything, but as John Kelvin pointed out, angels are involved
in all of God's providences. It was actually Moorcraft who clued me into some of John Calvin's
comments on this, but you see this all throughout the Bible.
Psalm 78 verse 49 tells us that the ten plagues that came upon
Egypt You thought it was just God, boom, speaking. No, it says
in that verse that it was angels who were bringing all of those
10 plagues upon the land of Egypt. And you certainly see the importance
of angels and all kinds of things in the book of Revelation. For
example, in chapter 8, you see angels somehow involved in taking
our prayers to heaven and somehow involved in bringing God's answers
to our prayers to earth. Well, if that's in any way true,
we ought to know a little bit about these angelic beings. What
are they doing? What are they like? In that same
chapter, angels were involved in destroying trees and grass
and ruining water. Chapter 16 shows an angel who
has the power to give diseases to people. What's with that?
Revelation 7 verse 1 shows angels involved in the wind. It says,
After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners
of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the
wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree."
And we think, really? Angels can hold back the wind?
Surely that's got to be metaphorical. And since we saw that this book
is written with symbols, We at least need to have in the back
of our mind, yeah, it's possible that this could be metaphorical,
but when you start reading what the Bible says about the activities
of angels, you realize, no, this is not. There are metaphors,
there are symbols that are involved, and yet they are very involved
in providences. In fact, John Frame points out
that they are involved in the tiniest parts of God's providences. Now, I'm not sure I would go
as far as John Frame, who says he sometimes wonders when he
sees the leaves rustling in the wind if the angels are doing
that. You know, maybe, maybe not, but
it's clear when you look at the various hints throughout the
scripture, they're involved in our day-to-day lives much more
than most Christians think. In Revelation chapter 8 and verse
5, it shows an angel bringing lightning strikes to the earth
and earthquakes. Another angel brings hail and
fire mingled with blood. Another angel turns water into
blood. And yet another angel darkens
the sun for one-third of the day. And by the way, I have already
mentioned that those things literally happened in the first century.
You read the Jewish historians, you read the Roman historians
of that day. and they talk about the sound
of the trumpet in the sky and they're all recording the same
thing and they saw all of these chariots and they saw at one
stage the sun turning dark and then on another day they saw
the moon turning Blood red and they saw fire and
and and blood falling out of the sky so thick that it made
the ground just greasy there are all kinds of weird things
that happened in the first century, but they're recorded and so These
these angels are involved in not only the strange Providences,
but also the ordinary Providences that men experience but there
are a lot of commentaries out there who think that this is
just too far-fetched so they say well the angels must be just
symbols of something and they're doing things symbolically. But
if you do that with Revelation you're going to need to do it
with Exodus since all 10 plagues were said to be brought by God's
angels. Now was there symbols involved
in the Exodus 10 plagues? Absolutely yes. Those 10 plagues
are taking on the ten gods of Egypt, showing God's sovereignty
over them, His victory over them, but at the same time they were
literal plagues dealing with literal people and literal demons
and angels were involved in those plagues. So symbolic, yes. Literal,
we saw last week. Those two can go together. So You'd have to explain away Exodus. If we explain away the angels
in Revelation as metaphors, then we'll need to explain away Job.
That describes angels bringing lightning strikes and tornadoes.
Okay, you cannot properly interpret the book of Revelation if you
do not take into consideration trillions of demons, which are
fallen angels, and twice as many good angels that are out there.
The book of Revelation is an unveiling that shows us Jesus,
but it also unveils and opens up the invisible realm of the
heavenly kingdom of Christ and its impact, its impact upon the
earth. And that heavenly kingdom involves
an innumerable number of angels. By the time we get through the
book of Revelation, I think you're going to have a whole new appreciation
for the role of angels, not just in history out there, but in
your own life. Uh, the moment the unveiling happens in verse
one, We see a father, son, we see an angel, and it shouldn't
surprise us, they are everywhere. We can thank them for having
given us the gift of the Bible, they're somehow involved. Luke
15, 10 says that they rejoice when a sinner is converted. Psalm
91, verse 11 says they protect believers, and there are a bunch
of other scriptures that say that. Matthew 18, 10 says every
covenant child has at least an angel assigned to that child
to protect that child. Which means we shouldn't be surprised
when the Bible a number of times says that there are angels in
our midst. There are angels here right this morning and they notice
how you worship. They notice the expressions on
your faces and no doubt these angels are astonished that you
could approach the throne of God so casually. You know, when
God unveils His throne in Revelation chapter 4, and you see the fiery
stream coming from that throne. It's one of the most awesome
descriptions of God and His throne. All the people fall on their
knees. They cast aside any of their own agendas, and they fall
down with awe at God's presence. And so there are angels in our
midst who are before God's throne and they look at you and they
wonder, what are these people thinking when they worship? They
witness what is going on all around us. Luke 16 verse 22 says
that an angel will carry your soul to heaven when you die.
They are so involved in our lives that it really is astonishing
that we are more afraid of the enemies out there than we are
of the good, the elect angels. John Frame, Professor of Theology
at Reformed Theological Seminary said, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 10. Paul
feels no need to explain this phrase. He assumes the Corinthians
will understand what he means. Modern Christians, including
myself, have lost the vivid consciousness of angelic beings that New Testament
believers took for granted. Part of the problem is that modern
people have lost touch with the supernatural and preternatural. They've become skeptical of any
world or any beings beyond those of our senses. Christians at
least believe in God, but they have absorbed enough of the anti-supernaturalism
of their culture that belief in angels seems foreign to them.
The doctrine of angels rebukes the smallness and impersonalism
of our cosmology. Modern worldviews typically claim
to have discovered a much larger universe than was known to the
ancients and the medievals. But they have a much smaller
view of the universe of persons, having abandoned belief in God
and in angels. According to scripture, however,
vast numbers of angels inhabit the world. So we need to develop
a larger perspective. And then he goes on to talk about
Elisha's servant, being absolutely terrified of these armies that
had surrounded their city, and God opened his eyes, he unveiled
the spiritual realm, so to speak, where he could see all of the
myriad numbers of good angels that were surrounding him, and
all of a sudden he realized why Elisha was not the least bit
worried. Elijah had earlier said, do not
be afraid for those who are with us are more than those who are
with them. Well, that's the perspective that the book of Revelation gives
to us. OK, it starts with an angel who
intersects with a man. There is angelic activity than
all the rest throughout the rest of this book. And by unveiling
this unseen world, God removes fear from the Christians by showing
us that there are more with us than there are with the world.
It's a very encouraging thought. So while the mention of an angel
is primarily to tell us something about how we got the book of
Revelation, it is our first introduction to the invisible world that is
around us that the rest of the book opens up much more fully.
But there's a third thing that this word angel clues us into.
John's experience of an angel communicating this revelation
is identical to the way God did it in Ezekiel Daniel and Zechariah. So any Hebrew in the first century
who would have read this book would have immediately thought,
you know, this is just like what happened to Ezekiel, Daniel and
to Zechariah. And it would have been one of
the first of many clues in this book that he's going to be relying
very heavily. He's going to be doing the same
kinds of things and actually drawing a lot of the imagery
from those prophets. G.K. Beal and D.A. Carson's massive
book, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, not
only shows that Revelation has approximately 1,000 allusions
to the Old Testament, it shows the enormous influence of Daniel,
Ezekiel, and Zechariah. Now, even though Isaiah has the
most quotes, is quoted the most times in the book of Revelation,
the most number of verses that are covered in Revelation are
allusions to Daniel. And then the next closest would
be very closely followed by Ezekiel, the Psalms, and then the imagery
of Zachariah. So that's why I spent an entire
point on one word, on the word angels. It's a presupposition
that he just casually lays down here of what's going to be going
on in the rest of this book. Now that brings us to the 11th
principle that John was actively involved in the writing And therefore,
we must consider his authorial intentions. This principle may
not actually be intuitively obvious to you. In fact, it may seem
like it's a contradiction of what I said earlier, that 100%
of this book comes directly from God. Every word of this book
comes from God. And so the question comes, If
prophecy is God speaking through John, what is John's intentions
have anything to do with it? Well, we're going to see it has
a lot to do with it. Let's read verses 1 through 2 again. The
revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his slaves,
things that must occur shortly. And he signified it, sending
it by his angel to his slave John, who gave witness to the
word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, the things that
he saw, both things that are and those that must happen after
these." Notice that John is not a passive recipient. He is a
recipient, but he is not passive. Verse 2 says of John, who gave
witness to the word of God, which is the Old Testament And to the
testimony of Jesus Christ, that's Christ's words in the Gospels,
the things that he saw, that's his immediate visions, both things
that are and those that must happen after these. He gave witness
to previous revelation just as all prophets before him had done. That's one of the roles of a
prophet. Now many commentators take all
three phrases as a reference to, as synonyms for the book
of Revelation. And you could take the Greek
that way. The Greek is ambiguous. You could take it two different
ways. But when you begin to understand that this is a very Hebraic book
using Hebraic style grammar, than the Hebraic use of the word
an and the role of John as prophet. I've come to a totally different
conclusion, and there are commentaries who agree with me on this, but
that this is, and we'll look more at it next week, but what's
going on with that is that prophets always brought attention to previous
revelation that people were ignoring. Typically, they brought covenant
lawsuits against churches or against nations. And they did
so for those nations of those churches violating God's law.
Well, John later calls himself a prophet. He calls himself a
witness. Those are very active courtroom kinds of terms. And the point is, he's a very
active participant on God's behalf. He's coming into agreement with
God the Father, God the Son, with this angel. And in doing
so, bringing a covenant lawsuit. And I'll talk about that more
next time. But let's consider the two halves
of inspiration. It's very important we understand
what inspiration is. In fact, for the first part,
why don't you turn with me to 2 Peter 2. This is one of many verses that
indicate that man's will did not originate Scripture, only
God's will did. Look at verses 19 through 21,
2 Peter 1, 19 through 21. And so we have the prophetic
word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that
shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning
star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation, For prophecy
never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit." So John didn't wake up one day
and say, you know, it'd be really cool to write some scripture.
Let's see, what should I write about? That would indicate that
the prophecy originated with his mind and with his will. But
Revelation 1 verse 1 has already told us that this revelation
started with God the Father, was given to Jesus, Jesus gave
it to the angel, and then, only then, was it given to John. It
did not originate in any part with John, and then John gives
it to the church. And verses 3, 4, and 10 make
clear that the spirit of prophecy inside of him enabled him to
receive it infallibly, to communicate it infallibly. So 2 Peter says
that no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but holy men
of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So John was
an instrument in God's hand. That's the divine side of the
Word of God. So why speak of John's authorial
intention? when we interpret this book?
And the answer is we must look at John's intentions because
there is a human side to all of Scripture. We should not think
of inspiration as a mechanical venture where God's, you know,
kind of moving the pen of John, kind of bypassing John's mind,
sort of a robotic or a dictation kind of a theory of inspiration.
Not at all. John is very actively involved
His personality, his vocabulary, his experiences, his unique styles
of writing are used by the Spirit to communicate his words. Now
think of it this way. If you had a musical piece that
you wanted to play, you could play that musical piece using
a trumpet, a violin, an oboe, a flute, there's any number of
instruments that you could use. And even though each of those
instruments would give a different feel, give a different flavor
for what is being communicated, you would be playing the exact
same notes on each one of those instruments, right? Well, in
the same way, God prepared special instruments to be receptors of
prophecy. In fact, you know, there's a
number of these prophets like Jeremiah and And the Apostle
Paul, they were said to have been set aside before they were
in the womb, sanctified in the womb. God was preparing them
even before Paul was a believer. He was preparing all of his experiences,
his vocabulary, all of these things to be the perfect instrument
on which the notes of prophecy would be played through. So then
God selected which instrument would be perfectly suited to
give the kind of flavor and vocabulary and the idioms and the kind of
things that he wanted each book to be noted for. So every book
of the Bible has a different human element to it, even though
the notes are precisely the notes and only the notes that God plays
through them. So the very verses that are quoted
in the Bible by one author to say God said something, the same
author in another sentence might say David said something. So
which is true? Is it God who said it or is it
David who said it? Well, it's both. For example,
Mark 12 verse 36 says, for David himself said by the Holy Spirit,
the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make
your enemies your footstool. David himself said by the Holy
Spirit, they are both true. So it's always appropriate to
quote any portion of scripture and say, God said, but it's also
appropriate to say, as the scripture itself does hundreds of times,
Moses said. Mark 7, verse 10. Acts 3, verse
22. Or Isaiah said, John 1, 23. John
12, 38. See, Moses and Isaiah were very
conscious when they spoke, and they themselves spoke using their
emotions, their words, and their thought processes, and yet it
is the very God, the very Word of God that is speaking through
them. And this is going to be very important when we start
considering authorial intention. As we go through the book of
Revelation, we're going to be asking now, What was it John, in that
context, was intending to say to that particular audience?
Very, very important. And people struggle with understanding
how the divine and the human can both be present without there
being any error in Scripture. And you're kind of getting, you
can see, a little discourse on how the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit works, right? If you want a fabulous book,
by the way, I've got a stack of one, two, three, four, five,
or six books on the back very, very well written on how the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit works. It's written by Dr. Robert
Fugate, The Bible, God's Word to You. And there are copies
going to be there only for this Sunday. So you'll want to pick
those up. make them available. I think
it's one of the best books written on the whole subject of inspiration.
But while I'm trying to give this in less than a thousand
pages, I want to be as crystal clear as I can possibly be on
what is involved here. And word pictures can sometimes
be helpful and that's why I gave you the word picture of the same
exact notes being played through different instruments. But here's
another word picture. Think of the incarnation of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You all know that doctrine. The
person of God the Son took to himself a human nature at conception. He did not take to himself a
human person. He was a person already, and Jesus is not two
persons. The person of God the Son took
to himself a human nature, and the divine and the human natures
are so tightly connected that what can be said of one nature
can be said of the person as a whole. So the scripture says
Jesus got tired even though his divine nature did not. The scripture
says Jesus was omnipresent even though his human nature was not
and is not today. His human nature can only be
in one place at the same time. Acts 20 verse 28 says that God
purchased us with his own blood. How can it say that? God doesn't
have any blood. Well, that's true, but Jesus
is both man and God, and Jesus purchased us with his own blood. And the doctrine of communicatio
idiomata, there's a $10 word for you, that you can put under
your belt. Communicatio idiomatum, it's
how you communicate these, the communication of these divine
natures in the personhood means that what can be attributed to
one nature can be attributed to the whole person of the Lord
Jesus Christ, even though it cannot be attributed to the other
nature, okay. So The human and the divine are
not confused, they're clearly distinguished, but they cannot
be separated. Now, using the incarnation of Christ as an analogy
might help you to understand how the scriptures, which are
God's own words being communicated from his mind to our mind, can
be incarnated in human language and emotion and idioms without
in any way having error. 19th century reform scholar Charles
Hodge said this, If a Hebrew was inspired, he spake Hebrew.
If a Greek, he spake Greek. If an educated man, he spoke
as a man of culture. If uneducated, he spoke as such
a man as want to speak. If his mind was logical, he reasoned
as Paul did. If emotional and contemplative,
he wrote as John wrote. All this is involved in the fact
that God uses his instruments according to their nature. His
son, A. A. Hodge, wrote, the Bible is
as intensely and thoroughly a human book as ever existed. It is based
on human intuitions. It proceeds through the lines
of human logic. It implies human feelings, tastes,
and experiences. Every separate book is a spontaneous
work of human genius and bears the marks of all the personal
idiosyncrasies of the historic situation of its author. The
individuality of Peter, Paul, John, David, Isaiah, and Moses
is as fully expressed in their writings as that of Shakespeare
or of Milton in theirs. Each of these books was also
a book of its time, bore the marks of its age, and was specifically
adapted to accomplish its immediate end among its contemporaries.
The provincialisms of thought and idiom proper to the situation
of their writers are found in these books. Of all books, it
is the most comprehensively human. Of all God's works, it is the
most characteristically divine. The doctrine of inspiration Well, we'll just stop the quote
there, but what I just taught here is the historic Church,
Church's doctrine of inspiration, all evangelicals hold to this
view of inspiration, and it perfectly fits the description given in
Revelation 1, verses 1 through 2. Not one bit of this book failed
to originate from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit. And yet John saw it. He wrote it. He witnessed to
it. And he was very active in the production of this marvelous
book. All the way through this book,
you're going to see John expressing his own thoughts and feelings
and interactions and puzzlements and responses. For example, if
you look at verse 4, it says, John to the seven churches. He couldn't say that if you take
a dictation view of inspiration. You'd only say God said. You
couldn't say John said this. And yet this is a word from John
in his capacity as an apostle over the churches of that region.
And we'll later look at the doctrine of church government. where John
represents the General Assembly of Asia Minor. He writes to the
Presbyteries and the seven cities and their environments. But the
point, again, is that John is active. In verse 9, he says,
I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation
and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was on the island that
is called Patmos, etc. Well, is it John's words or is
it God's words? It's both. It's God's words being spoken
through God's prepared instrument. In other words, God is not dictating
to John and bypassing John's mind. It's just not the way inspiration
works. God used John and John's vocabulary,
which God had prepared beforehand anyway, to write his revelation.
In verse 12, John narrates his reaction to hearing a voice.
And in this book, you see him expressing amazement, sorrow,
rejoicing. John's whole personality, experience,
position as an apostle, even his unique vocabulary and grammar
are part of the incarnation of God's Word in this book. It's
really what makes the Bible have such an impact on us. It's what
enables us to identify with the Bible. It's incarnated in human
form. Now I mentioned grammar. Entire
books have been written on the unique vocabulary and grammar
that are found in John's gospel, his epistles, and especially
in the book of Revelation. But earlier commentaries sometimes
missed this and they thought that John was making grammatical
mistakes. No. He was a Hebrew, speaking
with Hebrew thought, using Greek grammar. In fact, more and more
commentaries are recognizing this is very deliberate. He could
have written in normal Koine Greek or classical Greek, but
God wanted these Hebraisms. It was the only way to effectively
communicate what he wanted to communicate. And even liberals
like Charles recognized this. He said, While he writes in Greek,
he thinks in Hebrew, and the thought has naturally affected
the vehicle of expression. And it's one of the reasons I
so love this book. It is so Hebraic. It is Jewish
through and through. It's a wonderful book, and it
makes a difference on how you translate certain sentences when
you realize there's Hebrew grammar that's underlying the Greek grammar.
And we'll get into that in the future. Now, these first five
verses of Revelation have given a fairly I've given a fairly
extended doctrine of inspiration, that's important in its own right,
but I've already hinted that the main reason I'm describing
this human side to inspiration is to demonstrate the legitimacy
of asking the question, what was John intending to communicate? Two sermons ago I quoted from
some people who think that authorial intent is meaningless, that it's
impossible to even determine. In fact, one writer said that
his opinion of a novel's meaning is just as authoritative as the
author's opinion of that novel. Even if the author disagrees
with him, it doesn't matter. It's a very subjective view of meaning. Postmodernism has destroyed any
attempt to find or be able to find original intent meaning. And this is one of the reasons
why the courts today pretty much have discarded the idea of original
intent on the Constitution. They think original intent is
a meaningless concept. They're approaching it very much
from an evolutionary perspective. It's one of the reasons why I
pointed out before that these critics of English literature,
the vast majority of them, they don't care about original intent
meaning. And more and more you are seeing
people interpreting the Bible without caring about what original
intent meaning or authorial intent was there. Just this past week
I talked to a Christian, we were debating on the death penalty
for murder. And he said, you know, nobody
can really know what the scripture says about the death penalty
for murder. And I'm thinking, I've just read
it, it's just so straightforward. And he said, oh yeah, everybody's
got a different interpretation on the scripture and everybody's
Opinion is just as legitimate and I said no everybody's opinion
is not just as a legitimate So as we go through this book of
Revelation, we're gonna be asking what was John's intent? What
was? He trying to get across to his
original audience So I want to end by giving you several rules
that John Piper wrote About that helped to discover original authorial
intention in every book of the Bible He said first Be very self-conscious
about reading for the author's meaning, not your own. Too frequently,
Christians read the Bible because they want some subjective, immediate
experience as they read the Bible. And they don't have the patience
to find out what the author wanted his original audience to know
and experience. It's kind of a stream of consciousness. You
know, as I read this, what do I feel? What thoughts does it
generate in my head? No, that's a sure way of going
down into liberalism. Guaranteed. Piper said, when
we read, we want to know what an author intended us to see
and experience in his writing. He had an intention when he wrote. Nothing will ever change that.
It is there as a past objective event in history. And I say amen. We must discover that meaning
that existed back then and has been preserved for us in the
text. Well, how do we discover that
meaning? He says we discover it by asking questions of the
text. By the way, asking questions is a great way to stay awake
when you're ready to fall asleep during my sermon, start asking
questions. The moment your mind starts thinking
of things as, oh, there's a puzzle that I need to solve, there is
a conundrum I need to think through, it immediately starts engaging
in a different way. And too frequently, when people
are listening to sermons, they're just passively listening to the
sermon. When is this going to ever be
over? Or when they read the Bible, they're just passive about it.
No, you got to be active with your mind. It's one of the reasons
I'm able to, when I do devotions at home, able to get applications
as I'm constantly asking questions of the text. But anyway, what
kind of questions should we ask? Well, he says, first of all,
ask, what does that word mean? And what does the word mean in
this specific sentence? Because sometimes words can have
two or three meanings. Well, you can look it up in the
dictionary, but sometimes the very asking of that question
makes it intuitively obvious what the meaning is, because
the context tells you what the meaning is. Let me just give
you an example from Revelation. When John says, to the seven
churches which are in Asia, we can ask, what does Asia mean? And you look it up in your map,
and it's like, wow. Asia overlaps with modern Turkey. But the mere asking of that question,
what does the word Asia mean, immediately begins you to process
through and you realize, hey, this was an actual place, and
these are actually seven churches. He's talking about something
real in history. And yet it's astonishing how
many commentaries are out there who say, no, it's not really
seven literal letters to seven literal churches and literal
Asia. These are just metaphors to the church at large. In fact,
how many historicists and how many futurists take each of these
letters as different ages of the church? And we say, no, if
you start asking questions of the text and what would the original
authors, I mean, readers have said, you know he's talking about
a literal church in the first century in a literal Asia. So
you ask questions like that. What does this particular word
mean? Next, ask yourself what a phrase means. A phrase is a
group of words without a verb. So if you have a sentence that
says, put sin to death by the Spirit, it has two phrases, and
when you ask what does the phrase by the Spirit mean in relationship
to putting sin to death, it tells you how we kill sin. We don't
kill sin by beating up ourselves, starving ourselves, trying harder. I mean, the Pharisees tried harder.
They tried very hard. But God says they were utterly
unsuccessful in putting sin to death. So you realize, OK, putting
sin to death by the Holy Spirit means he wants it done in a specific
way, not in all of these other ways. And what does it mean to
put to death sin by the Holy Spirit? I'm not going to tell
you this morning because that'll get us down a rabbit trail. But just asking that question,
not only makes you interact with the meaning of the text, but
it makes you interact with, have I experienced that? Am I just
doing what the Pharisees did, or am I putting sin to death
by the Holy Spirit? What does that mean? It forces
you to begin investigating. Next, he asks, he says, ask about
relationships between propositions. And let me quote him here. He
says a proposition is a group of words with a subject and a
verb. How propositions relate to each other is one of the most
important questions we can ask. Often there will be a small connecting
word that holds the answer. For example, but, if, and, therefore,
in order that, because, et cetera. Sometimes the major differences
between whole theologies hang on these connections. So when
you're reading in Revelation, don't just quickly skip over
a because. It's showing that there is a
relationship, a dependency there. Don't skip over an if. It's showing
contingency there. Don't skip over a but. It's showing
there must be some kind of a contrast between the thoughts of these
two propositions. And it may seem foolish for me
to even have to bring up a rule like this, and yet it's astonishing
how many commentaries out there skip over and get wrong conclusions
because they skip over words like for example I'll give you
on historical sequence words like then, after this, after
these things, the second woe, the third woe is coming quickly
and yet you'll see commentaries that invert things and mix them
around and you're thinking they're not taking these connections
between propositions seriously. Even in this chapter, there's
controversy on what verse 9 means. I don't think it should be any
controversy. If you take the Hebraic grammar that underlies the Greek
and the word and, the way that the Hebrews used it in early
first century Jewish Christianity, it's straightforward. It's straightforward.
The next thing Piper says is, ask how the context helps to
define the meaning of the words and phrases. So if the context
is in the first century and then you arbitrarily take the next
phrase off into the distant future at the second coming, you violated
this. Okay, so the context is king. The context is so, so important. And again, you've got commentaries
who go back and forth between first century and 2,000 years
later. It doesn't work. You've got to
take context and make it king. Fifth question is, how does this
passage relate to other parts of the Bible? Now most errors
in Revelation flow from a failure to ask this question. Quite a
few books that have studied the relationship between Revelation
and the Old Testament recognize that this book has more Old Testament
references than any other book of the Bible. The Nestle-Allen
Greek Bible has 635 cross-references to the Old Testament, and van
der Waals' commentary claims there's approximately 1,000 allusions
to the Old Testament. I haven't counted them all up.
But that means you're missing a lot if you don't ask how a
sentence relates to the Old Testament. John was saturated in the Old
Testament, and to understand John's covenant lawsuit, We need
to understand the Old Testament. Now, it's at this point that
almost all futurists, historicists, and idealists fail. They don't treat the book as
a prophecy, okay? That is a covenant lawsuit against
churches and nations of John's own day. They've got things way
off into the future. But that's how covenant lawsuits
work. Now, if you have a cross-referenced Bible, it'll give you some help.
I've already mentioned Beale and Carson's massive book. Commentary
in the New Testament, use of the Old Testament. But hey, just
the simple cross-references in your margin ought to be sufficient. So don't ignore them. If you've
puzzled, what in the world does this mean, and you start looking
up the references in your margin, it may help you solve the problem
right there. The sixth question relates to
application. How did the author want his readers
to change? Or if you want to personalize
what Piper said, how does God want me to change? See, John
did not write this book as a purely academic exercise. In verse 3,
it says he wants his readers to be blessed by this book. He
wants his readers to obey this book, to keep the things that
are written in it. He wants us to change. And then the seventh
question Piper asks is, what is the appropriate response of
my heart and my affections? He said, the aim of our Bible
reading is not just the response of the mind, but of the heart.
The whole range of human emotions are possible responses to the
meaning of the Bible. God gave us the Bible not just
to inform our minds, but also to transform our hearts, our
affections. God's Word is honored not just
by being understood rightly, but also by being felt rightly.
Finally, he says at every page, pray and ask for God's help.
Every time I read the Bible, I'm praying for God to give me
illumination, to open up my eyes. Sometimes I use David's prayer,
Open thou mine eyes, that I might behold wondrous things out of
thy laws. Psalm 119, verse 18. But here
was John Piper's prayer. Oh Lord, incline our hearts to
your word. Give us a desire for it. Open
our eyes to see wonders there. Subdue our wills and give us
an obedient spirit. Satisfy our hearts with a vision
of yourself and your way for our lives. And it's my prayer
that God has opened your eyes to at least two things this morning,
to the incredible role that angels have in our day-to-day lives
and in history, as well as the meaning of the inspiration of
the scriptures. But the second thing that I hope
you will come away from on this sermon is a real desire to grow,
change, become more and more like the Lord as you read through
these scriptures. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Father, we
thank you for your word. We thank you for the intentions
that you have placed there. And we pray that the word would
not fall to the ground, but it would accomplish its good work
in our hearts. Help us to approach your word
with reverence and to approach it in a way where we will be
transformed, where it will turn our lives inside out and upside
down and reform us and make us more and more conformed to the
image of Jesus. And it's in his name that we
pray. Amen.
Divine Guidance for Understanding Revelation, Part 3
Series Revelation
This sermon deals with two more presuppositions that help us to
understand Revelation: the role of angels and authorial intention. In
the process the sermon also covers issues related to providence,
inspiration, Hebraic grammar of the Greek in this book, relationship of
Revelation to Old Testament books, rules for discovering original
intent, how to profit from reading the Bible, etc.
| Sermon ID | 9932416184270 |
| Duration | 52:12 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 1:1-3 |
| Language | English |
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