Revelation Chapter 1 Verse 4

• The “Asia” in Biblical literature is modern day Western Turkey.
• And its interesting here that John writes to the “seven” churches which is the number of completion.  So it speaks not just to those churches there in Asia but to the whole church, the complete church.  And we’ll see that as we dive deeper into the text.  Yet it does also speak directly to those churches which John knows of personally, he was involved in presently…the churches that had established there in Western Turkey.
• And recall our conversation last week about the current state of the church.  The church had come under intense persecution and you know that at this time it was Domitian that was in power there in the Roman Empire and just like his predecessor, Caesar Nero, he would murder Christians by the hundreds frivolously and brutally.
• History tells us that he would light his walkways and gardens with the burning bodies of Christians shrieking “you are the light of the world.”  And he would have Christians stripped naked and covered in lamb skins and sheep’s wool and made a public spectacle as the Romans proclaimed “you’re the flock of Jesus!”  Before feeding them to hungry beasts…lions and such.  Horrific times.  Times of mocking, times of murder. 
• Now John is a pastor, a church planter, a spiritual father.  He knows what his churches are facing.  What they’re up against, what they’re going through.  What he himself knows personally as even know he is exiled on the island of Patmos.
• And so notice his kind exhortation, “grace and peace.”  Grace “charis” was the greeting of the Greeks…peace “shalom” was the greeting of the Jews.  And notice John puts them together…why?  Because they are always linked.  They are always linked in the Bible and they are always linked in life.  Grace and Peace.  And notice, grace always comes first!  Grace, the unmerited, undeserved, unearned favor of God.  You can’t merit it or earn it you don’t deserve it…its just God blessing you.  Now the degree that I understand grace is the degree that I will know peace.
• Persecution is all around as it was here at this time.  Perilous times 2 Timothy would say will come upon the world in the last days…tight times literally in the Greek…which indeed the global economic society we live in today is tightening around people personally as folks are working harder, working longer…longer days and longer in years…earning less if they are even able to find a job as unemployment is soaring…even our own national debt, do you know who we owe?  We owe ourselves!  We have borrowed against our own Social Security system to the point of no return.  To the point of future unavoidable catastrophe as we’ve even seen the symptoms even recently with the collapse of big banks.  The tightening of the world system is at hand and men have turned their focus not to God’s grace and but to their gathering of gold and more and more…more of what?  More of what will be worthless in just a short while.  But in the forsaking of grace, in the missing of grace…there is another miss…peace.
• Grace always comes first.  The church going through these times, you and I living in our time…they and we can have peace…if we understand grace.  That God is there and He is going to see me through, He’s going to cover me completely, not because I am such a success, not because I am good because I am not and not because I have it all together because I don’t, not because I am a righteous guy…I fail constantly…but because I understand grace.  That’s why I have peace.  Because my faith is not in me…it’s in Jesus Christ and His finished work upon the cross of Calvary.
• We strive and we struggle to hold it all together and we begin to be sin accountants, watching and weighing and numbering our sins hoping to be able to hold up a sign to God and to the world that says “I’m good enough” and man that is such a tragic habit we have because we not only bring that upon ourselves, we impose it upon others!  But grace man…God’s wonderful, complete grace says I’m going to belss you and take care of you not because of your faithfulness but because I am good and I am faithful and I will do what I have promised.
• And notice this grace is not from us, its not from the world, its not from “making it” ya know the American Dream and such…this grace and this peace is from the one who was and who is and who is to come.  I love this description of God because God transcends time.  He lives in the eternal now.  He is above time.  He sees and has seen it all already.  He’s not wondering what will happen next and oh my what if that happens…He already knows how the story goes, He already sees…and He is at perfect peace so we can be also if we again, would draw near to His grace and place our trust in His faithful promises.  Get a grasp on grace and peace will flourish. 
• And notice this grace and peace also extends from the seven Spirits who are before His throne.  Now this isn’t some sort of team of Holy Spirits but rather this is a sevenfold characterization of the one Holy Spirit.  Notice Isaiah Chapter 11 verses 1 – 2.   These seven aspects of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord which rests upon, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of counsel, the Spirit of might, the Spirit of knowledge and the Spirit of the fear or awe or obedience or submission of and to the Lord.
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• And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.  The complete showing of the Father…the utter revelation of the One who is holy and absolutely other.  Just like the little girl who was drawing one day and her father walks up and says “honey, what are you drawing there?”  And she without stopping says “I’m drawing God daddy.”  And then her father says with a smile and a bit of a chuckle “honey, no one knows what God looks like.”  And so she slams down her crayon and looks up at him and says, “well they will in a minute!”  HA!  As she draws out what God looks like, what He is like…that is what Jesus did for us, for you and I…the faithful witness to the very nature and character of the Father.
• And when you read your Bible from cover to cover…everything must be filtered through the person of Jesus Christ!  His works, His words…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory full of grace!  And here John, this guy that knew Jesus intimately, personally says here that He is the faithful witness and the first born from the dead. 
• This doesn’t mean chronologically, this means preiminently…Laz was before him…and so this doesn’t mean he was the first in terms of time but rather in terms of absolute preeminence.  Think of the first lady of this country.  Does that title mean that she is the oldest woman that has ever lived?  No…it means she has precedence…she is the “first lady.” 
• Jesus, the firstborn from God coming to us, dwelling among us, dying for us...has preimence.  There’s none like Him.  None above Him.  None greater than Him.  And no matter what Domitian is doing, no matter what our government is doing, no matter what some ruler is planning, Jesus is the ruler over the kings of the earth.  Look He’s not up there giving rule that the sinful deeds of men should be carried out…He’s ruling above that.  John 14, Jesus says “the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in Me.”  So no He’s not and has not and will not ordain rule and puppet sinful men like Ahmadenejad and Hitler and Stalin…no He’s the King of kings, the God of eternity…long suffering and not willing that any should perish and suffer forever apart from Him.
• He is in charge ultimately and even though sinful situations will cause searing pain now, all of our tears will one day be wiped by the hands that bear the scars of our redemption!  But for now He has look not ordained us to suffer…He has SENT us to recover!  Recover man!  Once we’re saved we are on a perpetual rescue mission!  Recover my lost sheep, Rescue My screaming and terrified and hopeless children!  I’ve saved you, I’ve washed you clean.  I’ve enabled you by giving you My Spirit and now My little child, My little solder…I’ve sent you!  Go get them! 
• And look, He is coming back.  We will one day stand face to face with Jesus.  Eye to eye.  And any and all suffering you and I face today while Jesus remains longsuffering…we WILL NOT REGRET!  We will cry out why not more God!  There were more that I could have reached if you would have taken all of my belongings…if you had of taken my health…if you had of taken all from me except my faith…and He will respond, “My little one, you weren’t strong enough.”  Well Lord you could have showed me that all of these trinkets and temporary toys were useless and that Your Word and Your mission were eternally essential!  And He would say, “I did, you didn’t read, hear and take in child.”  Oh how tragic those heavenly tears that yes He will wipe away but man I want to meet the King of Salvation with a shout of triumph!  Just like Paul man.  I HAVE finished well!  I HAVE run this race!  I HAVE fought the good fight!  And then to hear Him say Well don, enter into My rest…and then lock hands and arms with hundreds, thousands, millions of others that are there because He sent me to them and I was found not self-ful, but FAITHFUL and then walk into eternity with the King of Kings!

Chapter 1 Verse 6

• Oh but I’m not good enough…I can’t do that…not true!  Jesus loved us, washed us from our weakness and has made us kings and priests…not to the mirror, not to wall street, not to the world…look!  To Him!  He is the supply of your sufficiency!  He is the object, the subject and the agent of our faith, salvation, power and of our deeds.  It is God who wills and does in the hearts of men (Phil 2:13).  And so to Him be all the glory! 
• We so get locked into the lie that we have to live up to what people expect.  We have to please them and perform for them…that’s not faith, that’s pride and man that is exactly what the enemy wants you to think, feel, live out.  Did you know that?  Did you know that you are being controlled, influenced…you are serving the father of lies himself when you bow down at the alter of self image rather than at the alter of the Lord of Saboath? 

Chapter 1 Verse 7

• Check it out.  Behold He is coming with the clouds.  What does the cloud represent?  Look Biblically they represent the heavens but practically they represent what?  Storms.  The storms of your life the storms of the age of the gentiles.  As times tighten, look up…as perils proliferate…pray.  Behold, He is coming…with the clouds.
• The world will cry out when they seen Him come…notice, not the rapture.  This is the second coming, the second advent…after the tribulation period, after the time described in 1 Thessalonians 4 when WE are called UP into the clouds…you see a different time, a separate event from Jesus coming back to earth WITH the clouds meaning with heaven in tow (Hebrews 1)…you and I returning with Him as Jude writes “the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of His holy ones” as prophesied in Deuteronomy 33!   The tribulation period is not for us…His wrath is not for those who are washed clean and made righteous in His blood.  You see Jesus, our sin taken upon Him, has already experienced, has already satisfied the wrath of God against us and therefore we have justification and sanctification to the extent that the Lord tells us in Romans 5:9 that “we shall be saved, removed, from the wrath through Him” and 1 Thes 1:10 tells us that “Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come!”  Not delivers us IN but delivers us from!  And not present wrath but future wrath!  So we are not delivered in wrath during the tribulation but delivered from wrath before it begins you see?  Zephaniah 2:3 God declares “choose Me so that you may be hidden in the Day of the Lord.”  Jeremiah 3:12 states, “I will not cause My anger to fall upon you.” 
• And after the church age, chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, during the judgment period where the vials of God’s wrath are being poured upon the earth, Revelation records for us voices coming from the alter of God saying, “Holy and righteous are your judgments oh Lord!”  Why?  Because those that have been washed clean by the blood of the Savior are not there to absorb additional wrath. 
• And so this event, the second coming when Jesus returns…us with Him to rule and to reign…every eye will see Him (not possible until recent years with technology), even the Jews…all of the peoples of the earth and look they will mourn.  Would the church mourn?  No!  We would hoot and holler…but the tribes of the earth at this time…not the church, and so they wail!  Oh no!  He is real! 

Chapter 1 Verse 8

• I want to show you something.  Who is this Alpha and Omega?  The First and the Last?  The Almighty!  Well, the cults says “obviously, it’s God the Father!”  Ok.  Turn to Revelation 21.  Look at verse 6.  “And He said unto me.  It is finished…I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end.  I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.”  Who is that?  I agree.  It’s Jesus but still they would say no.   Well turn to Revelation 22 verses 12-20.  Verse 12 says, “behold I am coming quickly…”  Who is that?  Well look at verse 20.  Irrifutably this is as it says here in verse 20, Lord Jesus!  And now look back at verse 13.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End , the First and the Last.”  You’ll find this is who is speaking also to the Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 41:4 and 48:12.
• So JWs, Mr. Mormon, you have a problem.  If the Alpha and the Omega in Revelation 1 is God the Father and the Alpha and the Omega in Revelation 22 is Jesus Christ then you have two Almighties.  You have two Alphas and Omegas OR you have a mystery, that Jesus…the Lord Jesus and God the Father are One!  And if they are One then indeed the premise, the pillar, the position of your profession is bankrupt and you are lost.  You see this is Jesus Christ speaking here.  The same that was speaking in the Old Testament, the second Person of a mysterious and completely Other Triune God!

Chapter 1 Verse 9

• John says I am on Patmos for the word!  That means that because of my testimony I have been banished, exiled because it is contrary to the decrees of the emperors of Rome.  True, but here’s the point.  John says, I am on Patmos…for the word.  God has put me on this island, in this tough spot, in this difficulty…I’m old, I’m bold and boiled…and I am here now in this place for the word.  Not just because I am a preacher but that I might receive MORE revelation from Him.
• All alone, old, weak, exiled, hungry…but I’m here so that I may hear from God without distraction!  That’s why!  That’s the point!  Listen, as believer, as Christians, things do not happen to us they happen FOR us!  Whatever you are going through…whatever it might be…you are in that place, you are on that Patmos FOR the word of God.  God wants to give to you revelation!  John would have never received revelation if he wasn’t on that rocky forsaken island, forgotten seemingly, being cheated/punished unfairly, where things looked awful and bleak.  But he is and he is faithful as he states “I am here FOR the Word of God!”  And the revelation he received…GREAT!
• But since he is here and he is as we will read next time, “In the Spirit,” and not trivial, trite and shallow…not allowing himself and you not allowing your life to be light weight and frothy and silly and a waste…I want my life to have substance…I want people around me not to bow down and do what I want and to serve me and give to me but to be encouraged and uplifted!  I want my family, my children, my wife, my friends to see and have the truth and see the big picture and for them to walk with You Father!
• I need revelation so that I might lead them correctly.  God says “great, you need the revelation of My Son.”  And man once someone grabs onto that simple truth then things don’t happen to you, they happen for you.  Romans 8:28.  That is truth.  And then no matter the place you find yourself, no matter your present situation…your heart will say, “praise Him…cause He is here for me and I am ready to receive revelation!” 
• 2 Cor Chapter 1 says that He comforts us in all our tribulation.  Small “t” tribulation.  Our tough times, our hard places…without them how do we know the comfort of God?  How do we see it?  We don’t!  Oh that is what I want, Matt…the comfort of God right now…ok, me too but look there is something to be learned here.  Turn over to 2 Cor Chapter 1.  Look at verses 1 through 7.
• Your suffering and subsequent consolation is for what?  That we may be able to comfort others.  If that is not your goal, go your way belly-aching.  Go your way suffering…because consolation cannot come to you until your heart is aligned with God’s will and commandments…to love others.  There’s a bigger picture.
• The tough time, you can go through shallow and hollow and the entire time will be great loss…or…you can say as John says here, “I am here, I am where I’m at for the word of God!”  And you will not only surge with hope and revelation now but you will emerge a weapon of freedom to those and for those wrapped in chains of blindness still!  And not only profess the will of God, profess fellowship with Jesus but you will perform the very will of God and practice powerful fellowship with His Son and Spirit!  And man that is why we are here, in this world, on this Patmos, to learn that and live that!  But its your choice, ultimately its you who lives…or lies.  I pray and Jesus prays and God the Father purposes and God the Spirit pleads that you might have life, and have it abundantly!!  That you may be a person of substance…