1. "The way you rank those cares is not always conscious. Sometimes it's simply a reflex, a habit. You don't always think carefully or ask critical questions about what actually means more to you. Until you come to some kind of crisis."

2. "All of the most important realities that the Bible teaches us about are by definition matters of faith. As matters of faith, they're invisible. You can't see them. One of the main challenges with believing all this stuff we can't see is that it could be hard to care. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind, out of heart."

3. "The visions are the spiritual alarm clock. Revelation enables us to see by these visions what we can't see with our eyes. The graphic figures, the intense imagery, the highly visual representation of spiritual realities, all this is meant to shake us awake. It makes familiar truths strange. It makes old truths new."

4. "The whole world is a courtroom and the dispute to be settled is this: Who is the true God? That's what Revelation is trying. That's the contest that's showing us."

5. "It turns out that when you boil down all the crazy imagery, it's really very simple. Believe, obey, worship, resist temptation. Jesus is going to come back. He wins. All who believe in him win. That's really all the book is teaching us."

6. "Sin enslaves us. It promises freedom but delivers slavery. It holds out visions of a good life, of happiness, of flourishing, of fulfillment, but it blinds you and it binds you. Sin is slavery."

7. "Jesus doesn't love you because you're saved. You're saved because he loves you. Jesus doesn't love you because you're righteous. He counts you righteous and makes you righteous because he loves you. Jesus doesn't love you because of who you are. He loves you because of who he is."

8. "One of the scariest truths about this life is that you can simply drift away from what matters most to you. You do care, but you drift, you neglect, you ignore, you take for granted. You say you care, you know you should care, but over time your affections wear away by attrition."

9. "To God, history is like a little roll-up snap bracelet. He holds it in his hand. He unwinds it according to his timeline. And when he decides, he brings it to a close."

10. "You should care what this book says because no one is like Jesus. No one loves you like Jesus. No one can do for you what Jesus can. And no one else is going to tell you what you most need to hear about yourself, about this life, and about the future of everything."

Observation Questions

1. According to Revelation 1:1-2, what is the chain of transmission by which this revelation came to John, and what three phrases does John use to describe the content he received?

2. In Revelation 1:3, what specific blessing is promised, and to whom is it promised? What three actions are mentioned in connection with this blessing?

3. How does Revelation 1:4-5 describe the source of "grace and peace"? What titles or descriptions are given to each member of the Trinity in these verses?

4. In Revelation 1:5b-6, what three things does John say Jesus has done for believers, and what response does this prompt from John?

5. According to Revelation 1:7, what will happen when Jesus comes with the clouds, and how will people respond to seeing Him?

6. In Revelation 1:8, what titles does the Lord God use to describe Himself, and what do the phrases "Alpha and Omega" and "who is and who was and who is to come" communicate about God's nature?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does John emphasize the elaborate chain of transmission (from God the Father, to Jesus, to the angel, to John, to the churches) in verses 1-2? What does this tell us about the authority and reliability of the book of Revelation?

2. The sermon explained that the visions in Revelation are "highly symbolic" and function like "visual metaphors." How does understanding this genre shape the way we should read and interpret the book? Why might God choose to communicate through symbolic visions rather than straightforward descriptions?

3. In verse 5, John uses present tense to say Jesus "loves us" but past tense to say He "has freed us from our sins by His blood." What is the significance of this distinction, and how does it connect to the Exodus imagery the sermon highlighted?

4. How do the two Old Testament passages alluded to in verse 7—Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10—work together to explain both who Jesus is and what will happen at His return? What does the "wailing" of the tribes signify according to the sermon's interpretation?

5. The sermon stated that Revelation is "like Scripture, only more so." In what ways does this introduction (verses 1-8) intensify or make explicit claims about divine inspiration, authority, and the appropriate response that are present throughout all of Scripture?

Application Questions

1. The sermon warned that we can "drift away from what matters most" through neglect. What specific spiritual practices, relationships, or truths have you been prone to neglect recently? What concrete step could you take this week to pay closer attention to what you have heard (Hebrews 2:1)?

2. Verse 3 promises blessing to those who "keep" (obey) what is written in Revelation. The sermon emphasized that the book is "intensely practical"—calling for belief, obedience, worship, and resistance to temptation. Which of these four areas is most challenging for you right now, and what would faithful obedience look like in your current circumstances?

3. The sermon described sin as promising freedom but delivering slavery. In what area of your life are you most tempted to believe that disobedience would bring greater freedom or happiness than obedience to Christ? How does the truth that Jesus "has freed us from our sins by His blood" (v. 5) speak to that temptation?

4. John bursts into worship in verses 5-6 because of Jesus' love for him. How often does your awareness of Jesus' present, ongoing love for you lead you to spontaneous praise? What might help you cultivate a more consistent heart of worship in response to His love?

5. The sermon asked non-believers, "What could convince you that the Bible really is from God?" If someone in your life asked you that question, how would you answer based on what you learned from this passage and sermon? Who might you have that conversation with this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Daniel 7:9-14 — This passage provides the background for the "Son of Man coming with the clouds" imagery in Revelation 1:7 and reveals Christ's reception of eternal dominion from the Ancient of Days.

2. Exodus 19:1-6 — This passage contains the original promise that Israel would be "a kingdom of priests," which Revelation 1:6 declares fulfilled in Christ for all believers.

3. Zechariah 12:10-14 — This prophecy about mourning for "him whom they have pierced" is directly echoed in Revelation 1:7 and illuminates the nature of repentance at Christ's return.

4. Hebrews 2:1-4 — This warning against drifting away from the gospel reinforces the sermon's call to pay attention to God's Word and not neglect so great a salvation.

5. Isaiah 44:6-8 — God's declaration that He is "the first and the last" provides Old Testament background for the "Alpha and Omega" title in Revelation 1:8 and emphasizes His uniqueness and sovereignty.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of Why We Should Care

II. Who's Talking? (Revelation 1:1-3)

III. Who Loves You? (Revelation 1:4-6)

IV. Who's in Charge? (Revelation 1:7-8)

V. The Call to Hear, Accept, and Keep God's Word

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Why should I care?

Math teachers have to answer that question more than many of us. You've got a room full of 10-year-olds or 12-year-olds or 14-year-olds. You're trying to teach them about exponents and polynomials and constants. They say, When am I ever going to use this? If out there in the wild I encounter numbers of such overwhelming force and complexity that I'm beyond my ability to deal with them.

Can't I always use a calculator? And so poor math teachers do the best they can to motivate their students day in and day out. It's an uphill slog, I'm sure. Why should I care? Whenever you ask that question, whether you know it or not, you're asking it because there's something else you care about.

That is putting the thing right now into question. Why should I care? Why should I care about eating healthy? I'd rather have as much ice cream as I'd like, thank you very much. Why should I care about getting enough sleep?

I'd rather binge that new show on Netflix. Why should I care about patching up this friendship that's now on the rocks? After all, the other person started the fight. They're the one who's in the wrong. The way you rank those cares is not always conscious.

Sometimes it's simply a reflex, a habit. You don't always think carefully or ask critical questions about what actually means more to you. Until you come to some kind of crisis. You don't care about what you're eating until your doctor tells you your cholesterol numbers are through the roof. You don't care about getting enough sleep until you doze off while driving and almost get into a serious wreck.

There are so many things you don't care about until you get a wake-up call. And often, that wake-up call comes as a shock. It's a jolt. It's like an alarm clock. An alarm clock, that blaring noise that bursts your bubble of sleep and cuts right through.

That's the kind of wake-up call it often takes. Now, as I'm sure you've already noticed, you find yourself this morning in a Christian church.

We've spent nearly an hour already singing hymns, reading Scripture, praying together. And all of the most important realities we have given our attention to so far this morning are invisible. You cannot perceive them with your senses. You don't see them with your eyes. And some of them are promises we're waiting for.

That we trust will happen, but they definitely haven't happened yet. We've sung, Behold our God, but you can't see him with your eyes. Sam read to us in Psalm 96, say among the nations, the Lord reigns, but we don't see his throne. And Sam read a few verses later that the Lord comes, he comes to judge the earth. But he sure hasn't yet.

All of the most important realities that the Bible teaches us about are by definition matters of faith. As matters of faith, they're invisible. You can't see them. One of the main challenges with believing all this stuff we can't see is that it could be hard to care. Out of sight, out of mind.

Out of mind, out of heart. If you're a Christian, the question, why should I care? is a crucial one because it's possible simply to drift away from what you value most. If you're not a Christian, I recognize that you may not really care about all the spiritual realities we've been talking about. You might not believe in all of them or or any of them.

Whatever you do believe or don't believe, you're welcome here at all of our public services. We're glad to have you. My challenge for you this morning is this. If you're not a believer in Jesus, what could get you to start caring about these spiritual realities? What could motivate you to begin to seriously ask whether what the Bible says is true.

This morning we begin a series in a biblical book that has a unique way of jolting us awake to spiritual realities. The whole book functions like a spiritual alarm clock blaring at us to wake up. The book addresses a wide range of challenges that believers face, wider than people often recognize from persecution and martyrdom to wealth and worldliness and sexual temptation. And the book proclaims all the central truths of Scripture, that God is our holy creator, that he's the ruler of all things, that Christ has, by his death, achieved victory and has sacrificially saved us, and that Christ is going to come and bring his kingdom and renew all of creation. But this book teaches all these truths in a weird way.

Turn with me to the book of Revelation, which starts on page 1028 of the Pew Bibles.

Lord willing, over the next several months, I plan to preach through the whole book in 12 sermons. This morning we begin our study with chapter 1, verses 1 to 8. The big question our passage answers this morning is, why should I care? Why should I care what this book says? As the first eight verses, it's an intro to the whole thing and it's grabbing our attention.

It's grabbing our affections. Why should I care what this book of Revelation says? More broadly, the passage also answers the question, why should I care what the whole Bible says? Or what Jesus says. Keep those questions in mind as I read Revelation 1:1-8.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it.

For the time is near. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him.

Even so. Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

In these eight verses, John introduces the whole book of Revelation to us. And he does so in a way that does not assume you care, but that aims to get you to care. He aims to arrest our hearts and minds with the gravity and the beauty and the power of who God is, what it means for him to be speaking his very words to us, what Christ has done for us, and what he's going to do next. John introduces all this as a way to introduce his book. So to discern the passage's main point and get at its answer to the big question of why should I care, we're going to consider how the passage's three main sections answer three more questions: who's talking?

Who loves you? And who's in charge? Who's talking? Who loves you? And who's in charge?

Point one on verses 1 to 3. Who's talking? Look again at verse 1.

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants the things that must soon take place. The Greek word translated revelation is apocalypsis, from which we get our word apocalypse. Now, unlike you might think just from common usage, the word apocalypse doesn't mean in itself the end of the world. Instead, it means a revelation. It means an unveiling.

It means opening up and showing something that was previously hidden. And the words come to describe a whole genre of literature that revelation belongs to. Revelation shares much in common with with other works written in the couple of centuries before Christ, couple of centuries after Christ that use visions to express spiritual realities, which we'll talk about more in a minute. Now, the phrase revelation of Jesus Christ acts as a title for the whole book. This is a revelation by Jesus.

I think that's the main meaning of that phrase. Jesus is the one doing the revealing. But of course, it's also a revelation about Jesus. Who he is in himself, what he's done to save us, and what he's going to do to bring his kingdom to earth. So this revelation was given to Jesus by God the Father in order that he would give it to us, called here in this passage, his servants.

That's not a designation for a special class of Christians. That's a way of naming what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to be a servant of God. That means you belong to him. And it means your obedience is due to him.

To be God's servant is a position of both dignity and demand. And the things that Jesus is showing us must soon take place. That word must is crucial. These things must take place because they are God's will, because they are God's plans. There is nothing uncertain about God's plans coming to pass.

As we'll see again and again in this passage and again and again throughout the book, God holds all of history in his hands, from the tiniest detail to the toppling of kingdoms. He rules it all. But what about that word soon in verse 1? The things that must soon take place. Wasn't this book written 2,000 years ago?

Yes. Does this verse mean that everything in this book was supposed to take place right away? Not exactly. Much of what the book reveals, especially from chapter four all the way through chapter 21, verse 8, takes place throughout the whole time between Christ's ascension and return. Much of what this book reveals are things that are taking place soon and the time is near in the sense that they're starting to happen right now.

This book is revealing not only the future, but the true meaning and spiritual reality of the present. The rest of verses 1 and 2 tell us how this revelation got to us. He, that is Jesus, made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. John, the author of this book, identifies himself only by name, which means he must have been really well known if he could just say his name and expect everybody to know who he is. I think the simplest explanation is that he's the same apostle who wrote the gospel and letters of John.

Multiple sources from early on in church history tell us that the apostle John exercised a long ministry in the city of Ephesus in the province of Asia Minor, modern Turkey, which is where Revelation is addressed to and sent to. Verse 9, which we'll study next week, Lord willing, tells us that John was in exile on an island in the Aegean Sea called Patmos. He was likely banished there by regional government authorities who did not appreciate his preaching about Jesus. We're not sure when Revelation was written. It could be anytime between the 60s and the 90s AD.

But what's most important about Revelation is not when it was written or even the human author who wrote it, but who its ultimate divine author is. This is a revelation from God given to and then by the risen Lord Jesus by the hand of an angel to a faithful human servant who faithfully delivered all that he received. That's a long chain of transmission, but nothing is getting lost between God the Father and John writing this down and now us reading it and you hearing it.

John says he bore witness in verse two. This witness here is the book that he wrote. He's saying he bore witness in the past because, as we're going to consider more in a minute, when this letter is read aloud in local churches, his witness is passed from the time of reading. He bore witness and now they're receiving that witness. He uses the past tense to talk about his writing.

That they're now receiving. And then those two phrases, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus are just two different ways of describing this whole book. Again, look at that little phrase at the end of verse 2, even to all that he saw. So that's a third way of describing this book, the word of God, the testimony of Jesus, and all that he saw. This clues us in to the fact that the dominant genre of this book is vision.

Things that John was granted to see prophetically. By his spirit, God gave John visions of Christ, of heaven, of the future, of judgment. And John wrote down these visions in this book. This helps us understand another key word in this introduction. That phrase made it known of what God did back in verse one.

That phrase made it known translates a Greek verb that here probably also has the nuance of symbolized. Or made it known in the form of signs. In other words, it's telling us that this book is full of images, full of figures, full of visual metaphors. These visions stand for and represent spiritual realities. They don't give us literal or physical descriptions.

If you try to imagine a lot of these things taking place literally, they just break down. You cannot combine all of these things into one sort of concrete deal.

Very often, this happens throughout the book. So these visions are highly symbolic. The details have spiritual significance and often the key to understanding the significance of the details in the visions is simply knowing what Old Testament background they're drawing on. That's where the meaning of the symbols largely comes from. Almost every one of the kind of details you might puzzle over in this book has a lot of light shed on it by knowing what in the Old Testament, especially earlier prophets, John is drawing on.

So just a little aside, if you've been familiar say, with any best-selling series of books from the 1990s or movies based on them or many other kind of popular depictions of the book of Revelation. Obviously, those are well-intended. They're only trying to help people look forward to Christ's return and live accordingly. But some of the most influential popular understandings of the book of Revelation, I'm sorry to say, are also some of the most wrong. They just try to make these visual images walk on all fours.

They're fundamentally missing the genre of the book. These are describing real spiritual realities. These are describing things that are happening now and things that will happen. But it's doing so in a highly figurative way. You can think of all those visions basically as visual metaphors.

That's how you have to understand them. And now, it's precisely through those visions that revelation issues its continual wake up call. The visions are the spiritual alarm clock. Revelation enables us to see by these visions what we can't see with our eyes. The graphic figures, the intense imagery, the highly visual representation of spiritual realities, all this is meant to shake us awake.

It makes familiar truths strange. It makes old truths new.

It wakes up our imaginations in order to wake up our hearts. So a question you should ask throughout not only this sermon but throughout this study of this book: what does your heart need waking up from?

What are you tempted to care more about that makes you care less about God's promises and warnings in Scripture? If Satan were going to try to lull you to sleep, what would he use to try to slowly dim and dull your spiritual senses?

Look again at verse 2.

John tells us that he bore witness. He describes his writing of this whole book as an act of giving testimony, like in a court of law. You bear witness when the truth is on trial, when the truth is under dispute, when there's competing claims to be solved. So this whole book is a kind of courtroom where the truth is on trial. It's John's witness to Jesus' own witness about himself.

And it's given in order that we would bear faithful witness. Jesus bore witness, John bore witness, we bear witness. That's the whole thrust of the book of Revelation. It's to enable our witness. And what are we witnessing to?

What's the trial? What's being tested out in the world? It's this. The whole world is a courtroom and the dispute to be settled is this. Who is the true Messiah?

God. That's what Revelation is trying. That's the contest that's showing us. So what you're supposed to do with this witness is stated in verse 3.

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it. For the time is near. Is near. The novelist Wallace Stegner once said that California is like America only more so. It's new, right?

There's a pioneering spirit. People are going there to strike out and form a new life and new ways of doing things. It's a kind of melting pot and collection of all these different kinds of people. Sort of like America ratcheted up. That's what you find in California.

What I would say about the book of Revelation is that the book of Revelation is like Scripture, only more so. There's a certain way in which characteristics and qualities of Scripture are not only evident but intensified in Revelation, ratcheted up. So here's a couple. Here's what I mean. All of Scripture is inspired by God.

It's breathed out by His Holy Spirit who enables human authors to write by their own will exactly what God intends. And Revelation tells us that it's inspired too, that this is the word of God. It literally uses that phrase. But it goes even further. It gives us an explicit, elaborate account of the chain of transmission of this divine content from God the Father to God the Son by the hand of an angel through John as witness.

And now it comes to all of us right now.

To you as you hear these words. And here too in verse three, revelation is like all scripture only more so. In this sense, we know that scripture was written to be read aloud in assemblies of God's people. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:14, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture. Here in verse three, revelation announces that it is scripture.

By pronouncing a blessing on those who read it aloud and hear it. This book asserts and assumes that it will be treated as scripture. There is yet another way that Revelation is like all of scripture only more so. This is kind of an intro comment on the whole book and that is the way it relates to the Old Testament. Virtually every verse in this book alludes to or echoes language from the Old Testament.

But never once does John say it is written. He never once quotes the Old Testament. The apostle Paul is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He knows he's writing as an authoritative apostle and then he will also appeal to the authority of the Old Testament. He does it all the time.

John never does that. He just gathers up hundreds of scriptural threads from all over the Bible and weaves them all together into to one seamless fabric of his prophecy. He never borrows authority from anywhere else. It's all straight from God through the visions he gave him.

And in verse 3, he promises a blessing on those who read, those who hear, and those who keep. He doesn't mean keep, like, preserved safe in a box that you might just like take out and show to a visitor once in a while. He means keep in the sense of do what it says. Revelation is an intensely practical book. It is given to enable us to believe, to persevere in faith, to persevere in obedience, to resist the temptations of the world, to endure through hardships, all kinds of things that Revelation announces over and over again.

It's an intensely practical book. Practical book. This book was written not to be decoded like a secret message and just provide some kind of fantastical insight about the future. It was written as Revelation 14:12 says, Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. It turns out that when you boil down all the crazy imagery, it's really very simple.

Believe, obey, worship, resist temptation. Jesus is going to come back. He wins. All who believe in him win. That's really all the book is teaching us.

But it uses these visions again to wake us up to the dimensions of those truths. The blessing promised here in verse 3 is ultimately seeing the face of God. And being satisfied in him forever. How do you obtain that blessing? It's by persevering in faith and obedience.

Verse three is giving us another reason to pay attention. It's giving us another reason to care. That reason to care is a divinely guaranteed promise of eternal happiness for those who believe and do what this book says. Why should you care what this book says? Because of who's talking.

God the Father, through his exalted Son, speaking through an appointed prophet. If you're not a believer in Jesus, I want you to notice just how explicit this book's claims to inspiration and authority are. This book does not claim to be wise advice you can take or leave. This book does not claim to be one person's impressions of a religious experience they happen to have that they've done their best to kind of stumble around and put into words. And well, maybe your religious experience is just as good as this one and if you put it into your own words, that's equally valid.

That's not at all what's going on here. This book claims from the very outset to be the very words of God, which really leaves you only two options. You can accept what the book is saying about itself and therefore believe it and do it, or you could reject this book's claims completely. You can't really be neutral.

So here's my question for you about this book and the whole Bible. What could convince you that it really is from God? What evidence could this book or any other book in the Bible provide that might start to persuade you of the reality that these human words are also God's words.

I was raised in a Christian home and came to faith at a relatively young age. I didn't wrestle with these big questions too much in my kind of middle school and high school years. But then when I went to college in my freshman year, I took a class as a kind of historical examination of Christianity and Judaism. Where do they come from? What are the historical origins?

Looking at the scriptural texts, it was taught by a very liberal rabbi. And so I was forced to engage with a lot of these questions deeply for the first time. Is the Bible written by the people it claims to be? Did the events it records really happen? Do different authors in Scripture contradict each other?

I started wrestling with all those questions and more. And since then, I've been thinking deeply about these questions for almost 20 years now. For those of you who aren't Christians, let me just tell you two reasons Two reasons why I believe the Bible is what it claims to be. Two reasons why I believe that the Bible is the very words of God. First, the amazing unity of teaching across an astonishing diversity of cultures, historical periods, authors, and genres.

It's easy to kind of overestimate, you know, you think this is kind of like one simple thing, it's bound between these two covers, we Christians know the book as the Bible, It's really striking diversity. 66 books, several genres, 40 different authors from a variety of backgrounds and occupations. It was written over the course of 1,500 years against the backdrop of 10 civilizations on three continents in three languages. And it all tells one unified story of redemption. The whole Bible tells one coherent story.

Of how God created all things, how humanity plunged the world into ruin and misery through sin, how God called a people to himself and has begun the outworking of a plan of redemption that will one day encompass people from every tribe and language and nation, and how one day he will even redeem all of creation itself and make a new creation. The unity in diversity is astounding. And hard to fake. A second reason I believe the Bible is the word of God is its x-ray of the human heart, including my own heart, is more accurate, more penetrating, more revealing, and more powerful than anything I've found in any other religion, philosophy, or worldview. When it comes to showing what's wrong with me and how to fix it, the Bible doesn't just look at the fruits of observable behavior.

It gets all the way down to the deepest roots.

Both the Bible's diagnosis of what's wrong and its prescription for how to get right are more compelling than anything I have ever heard elsewhere. If you want to test that, go read Jesus's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7. Just ask the question, what is this showing me about myself? Or consider Paul's teaching on the fallen human condition in Romans 1 to 3. I'd love to talk to you more about that afterward.

Why should you care what this book says? Because of who's talking. God in Christ? But does God care about you? Brings us to point two: who loves you?

Who loves you? Verses 4 to 6 answer this question. Start at verse 4. John to the seven churches that are in Asia. This verse helps us understand that the book of Revelation is really kind of a combination of three different biblical One is prophecy, just like the Old Testament prophetic books.

Another is apocalypse, like certain portions of Daniel and Ezekiel that have these elaborate visions, just like Revelation. But a third genre is it's a letter. It's a letter, John to the seven churches that are in Asia. Specifically, it's a circular letter getting sent around to seven Christian assemblies in the territory of Asia Minor, which is modern Turkey. The number seven was probably chosen as a symbol of completeness to represent the universal church.

We know there were other churches in that region so these seven are singled out probably to symbolize wholeness and to symbolize that all churches are meant to hear and benefit from this message. Fun fact, one of our churches supported workers that some of our pastors just visited pastors a church in one of these cities. The church is called Smyrna International Protestant Church.

One key implication of the fact that Revelation is a letter is that its hearers must have been able to understand and make sense of and benefit from it when they initially heard and received it. They must have been able to derive profit from it. The visions of Revelation are not cryptic transmissions from the future. That could only make sense out of thousands of years of technological or political developments. That's one reason among very many why, for instance, the locusts of chapter 19 are not Chinook helicopters.

They're symbolic agents of God's judgment, nothing more, nothing less. In any case, verses four to six are a letter opening. And John goes on in a typical Christian adaptation of a Greek letter format to offer his recipients not merely greetings, but grace and peace. This grace and peace are from, verses 4 to 5 tell us, grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. This grace and peace is from God the Trinity and this is the most Trinitarian letter opening in the New Testament.

John first names the Father, then the Spirit, then the Son. He names the Father with the title, Him who is and who was and who is to come. This phrase echoes the Greek translation of Exodus chapter three, verse 14, where the Lord comments on his own personal name, Yahweh, that he revealed to Moses. And he says to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel, I am. Or you could say, the one who is has sent me to you.

So John puts he who is first to signal that scriptural reference. This phrase declares God's eternal self existence. As Welton led us in meditating on that attribute of God in prayer, that perfection of his life. Unlike us who have received our lives from God through our parents, God doesn't receive his life from anybody. He simply is life.

He simply exists in and of himself. Therefore, he also was, as John puts it in the past tense, as far back and farther than our minds could possibly reach. What about the third phrase? Him who is and who was and who is to come. John doesn't simply say that God will be, he uses a form of the verb to come.

Why? Because that phrase describes not just who God is, but what he's going to do. As Sam read to us from Psalm 96:13, the whole world will one day rejoice, for he comes. He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.

One day, God himself will come in salvation and judgment. One key the book gives us for interpreting the phrase this way, just flip ahead to Revelation 11. The book does this twice.

When God acts in decisive final judgments, when he wraps up all of his plans for this earth, brings it to an end and a new beginning. Those who praise God in the book for this act, this final act of judgment, praise him in a very similar way but not an identical way. Look at chapter 11, verse 17. Elders in heaven on their thrones praising God after his kingdom has fully come. We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was and who is to come.

For you have taken your great power and begun to reign. What happened to the phrase is to come? You don't need it anymore because he did come. He will come.

Back to chapter 1.

John next names the Holy Spirit in an indirect way.

The seven spirits who are before his throne. Again, it's a symbolic use of the number seven. John is very fond of numerical symbolism. This is a metaphorical way of referring to the perfection and the completeness of the spirit's works in all of its diverse effects. I don't think John is referring to seven angels here.

Sometimes commentators take it that way because angels are not the source of saving grace. This is saving grace and peace from God. It doesn't make sense to name angels sandwiched between the Father and the Son like that. Then third, John names God the Son, Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. Here, John provides a super brief snapshot of Jesus's saving mission that he accomplished for our sakes.

After becoming incarnate, Jesus bore witness to the truth throughout his life and in his trial and even by going to the cross. That was all a witness to the truth of God. Then Jesus rose from the dead as the firstborn and the first fruits of all who will be raised in him. Now ascended to heaven and seated at God's right hand, he rules over every earthly authority. Here John echoes the language of Psalm 89 to show that Jesus is not only the Messiah son of David, but as that Messiah, he's supreme over every earthly authority already.

This rapid recital of Jesus's saving acts leads John to burst out in praise. So after this letter opening greeting, he gives us a doxology and it's a doxology addressed to Jesus. We shouldn't miss this point. It happened several times in Revelation. Worship is rightly ascribed to Jesus.

So John says, To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Here, John gets right to the heart of what Jesus has done for all who believe in him, and he does it through the biblical lens of the exodus.

Jesus has freed us from our sins by his blood, just like the Lord freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt through the blood of the Passover lambs. Jesus has made us a kingdom and priests to our God. It echoes the passage we had for our call to worship from Exodus 19, which is what God promised to the people of Israel after he brought them out of Egypt in the Exodus. That's what God said Israel would be. Jesus has now made us.

John is saying that Jesus' death and resurrection have accomplished the final, perfect, complete exodus. One of sin's most powerful and prevalent lies is that it brings freedom. I was having a conversation recently with someone who's not a believer but they're very seriously looking into the faith and he said to me, so you as Christians don't believe in sexual freedom? And I said, actually, that whole phrase is wrong. By what you mean by it, I understand what you mean by it, but that phrase is a lie.

That phrase is misleading. Someone who's self-controlled, someone who's obedient to the Lord, someone who can master their own desires, they're far more free than someone who's a slave to their desires. Sin enslaves us. It promises freedom but delivers Slavery. It holds out visions of a good life, of happiness, of flourishing, of fulfillment, but it blinds you and it binds you.

Sin is slavery. Not only that, but it's an affront to the God who made us. By right, God is well within his authority, well within his rights, simply to judge us, to destroy us forever for our sin. And he promises to do that. He promises eternal punishment to all who persist in the slavery of their sin.

But because God is abundantly merciful and gracious and compassionate, he redeemed us. He liberated us. He sent his son to pay the penalty necessary to purchase all who believe out of slavery to sin, out of being condemned by their sins and condemned by God eternally. Jesus died on the cross to pay that penalty and he rose from death to inaugurate this new exodus of bringing us up out of the land of slavery to sin. That's what Jesus accomplished for us.

That's the promise he holds out to you of cleansing, of freedom, of being liberated from sin, of being reconciled to God. If you've never turned from sin and trusted in him, recognize that to believe in Jesus is to enter into a state of freedom that you never could have imagined. I would encourage you to turn from sin and trust in him, not thinking your sins will give you freedom. But knowing that only Jesus can. Jesus has freed us and made us a kingdom and priests.

That kingdom part has both a present and a future element. At present, we reign with him, we share in his authority, we conquer by him, even though we experience suffering, even though we experience hardship and opposition, even though there's persecution, even though some Christians pay for their confession with their lives. All of that is sharing in Jesus's present reign. And there's a future element. As Jesus promises in Revelation 3:21, the one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Jesus also makes us priests. That means that we who believe now serve God in all we do, especially by offering him true worship and by worshiping worshipping no false gods. Now why? Why does Jesus do all this? John tells us at the very beginning of his doxology in verse 5: To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, note the present tense of the verb.

Jesus demonstrated his love most dramatically by dying on the cross. And he went to the cross because he loved us. But he didn't just love us in the past. He still loves us. He always will love us.

As Charles Spurgeon put it, Jesus's nature is eternal and undying, and such is his love. He could not love you more. He will never love you less.

If you're a believer who struggles with assurance and you're prone to doubting your salvation, go looking for assurance in Jesus' love for you. Jesus doesn't love you because you're saved. You're saved because he loves you. Jesus doesn't love you because you're righteous. He counts you righteous and makes you righteous because he loves you.

Jesus doesn't love you because of who you are. He loves you because of who he is. And that is good news. John worships Jesus for his love. It is the love of Jesus that causes John to break out in worship, which tells us that Jesus's love for us is divine.

It's God's love. Only the God who is worthy of worship loves us like this.

Why should you care what this book says?

It's the answer to the question, who loves you. You who trust in Christ should care about this book because its author loves you like no one on earth can. He has loved you out of your sin and into his kingdom. He has loved you out of your slavery and into freedom. You should listen to what he says because every word, even the sternest warning, comes drenched in love.

Who loves you?

God in Christ and he loves you like no one else can. Point number three, who's in charge? Who's in charge? Last two verses of the passage, verses seven and eight.

John has introduced his book, its contents, where it came from. He's reminded us of the heart of Christ and what he's achieved for us. And now in verses seven and eight, John announces side by side two of the key themes of his prophecy, two advanced declarations of crucial themes that will echo through the whole book. Jesus is coming back to reign and God is sovereign over all things. First verse 7, Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Even so, amen. This power packed promise of Christ's return bundles in two allusions to crucial Old Testament passages about the work of the Messiah. The first is Daniel 7:13, which is an absolutely central verse for the whole book of Revelation. One of the most important passages. Daniel 7 is one of the most important chapters.

Daniel 7:13-14 is one of the most important passages. In that, Passage, Daniel the prophet sees a vision in which one like a son of man comes to the ancient of days, that is, to God on his throne. And he comes with the clouds of heaven. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus uses that phrase, the son of man, about himself to signal his fulfillment of this passage. And Jesus teaches in the Gospels that he fulfills this passage first by ascending to heaven and beginning to reign at God's right hand.

And that he receives dominion from the Father. And second, he will fulfill this by returning from heaven to establish his kingdom on earth. So when John says he's coming with the clouds, he's referring to what Jesus has not yet done and what the scripture says he must do. What Daniel 7:13 says he will do. Jesus is reigning in heaven at God's right hand.

And one day soon he will come to earth to bring his kingdom here. As Revelation 11:15 declares about that future day, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. One scholar rightly observed that the whole book of Revelation is an answer to the first three petitions Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord's Prayer: Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. As verse 7 says, when Jesus comes back, every eye will see him. When they do, all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

This echoes Zechariah 12, verse 10, which says, and I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced; they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. In this prophecy, God predicts that he himself will be pierced by his people but then at some later date there will be a spirit of grace and mercy causing them to repent. That's what all that language of grieving and mourning and wailing is. It's reversing changing their course, changing their mind about having pierced God himself. So Zechariah 12:10 promises the repentance of those who pierced the Lord.

Revelation 1:7 echoes and confirms that promise. So I don't think this verse is about wailing in judgment and condemnation. I think it's about the number of people from every nation, including some of those who even put Jesus to death, who will come to faith in him and express that repentance at his return. This doesn't mean people will repent when they see Jesus return. The only time for repentance is now in this life before you either die or Jesus comes back.

But this verse is borrowing that language of repenting and mourning and weeping to talk about the repentance that people will show and express at Christ's return as an expression of faith. John's point is that Jesus is the king of the universe now. But his kingship is contested now. A day is coming when it will no longer be and when all those who believe in him will rejoice at the sight.

One of the scariest truths about this life is that you can simply drift away from what matters most to you. You do care, but you drift, you neglect, you ignore, you take for granted. You say you care, you know you should care, but over time your affections wear away by attrition. After 10 years of neglect, a marriage finally falls apart. And you realize that in order to save it, you would have had to start a decade ago.

It wasn't anything you did. It was everything you didn't do. The even scarier thing is that same kind of drift can happen in your relationship with the Lord. As Hebrews 2:1 warns us, therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Don't drift from the truth of the gospel.

Don't drift from walking with the Lord. One key way not to drift is to remind yourself constantly that Christ is coming back. This life isn't all there is. What you see isn't all there is. Authorities that claim to be in charge are not, at least not in any final or ultimate sense.

Sins that promise pleasure lie to you and then disappear and desert you. Earthly prizes that seem worth giving up so much for will disappear before your eyes. None of that will last. But Christ's kingdom will. So take the promise of His return to heart.

Let it be a spiritual alarm clock that jolts you out of sleep. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, every gathering for corporate worship is meant to be that spiritual wake up call. It's easy for worldly duties to dull our spiritual senses. It's easy for worldly delights to lull us to sleep. Every week when we gather around God's word and declare these truths to each other, we are calling on each other to wake up again.

In verse 8, John declares his second matching prophetic truth that God is sovereign over all things. God holds all of history in his hand. Verse 8, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. There's two new phrases here that are in addition to what was already said in verse 4. It's the Lord God talking, sorry, three new phrases, is that it's the Lord God talking, Yahweh, who revealed himself to Moses, It's that he's the Almighty, which is the Greek way of translating the Hebrew phrase, Lord of Hosts.

He's sovereign over every spiritual power there is. And the third part that's new is God calling himself the Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. So the Lord is saying that he's the beginning and the end of all things.

He's the beginning of all things as their creator. He is the end of all things as their goal and their fulfillment. All things owe their existence to Him, and in Him all things find their final fulfillment and satisfaction.

Verse 8 is reminding us that God is in charge of everything. To God, history is like a little roll-up snap bracelet. He holds it in his hand. He unwinds it according to his timeline. And when he decides, he brings it to a close.

That's what the whole span of thousands of years, rises and fall of civilizations, that's what it looks like to God. He is in charge of it all. So why should you care what this book says?

Because of inspiration, the gospel, and God's sovereignty. Because it's written by God, because God loves you, and because God is in charge of everything. Because of Christ's revelation, Christ's love, and Christ's return. You should care what this book says because no one is like Jesus. No one loves you like Jesus.

No one can do for you what Jesus can. And no one else is going to tell you what you most need to hear about yourself, about this life, and about the future of everything. Will you hear what he says? Will you accept it? Will you keep it?

Everything hangs on that.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we would hear your word in such a way that we go away and keep it and experience the blessing youg promise us here. In Jesus' name, amen.