Revelation chapter 1, verse 1 down to verse 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.

Verse 4. 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, priest 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.

You’ll pardon me for a moment. It’s got to go down the inside, or I’ll be fiddling with that all morning, and it’ll drive me out of my mind. We all, none of us, want to see the pastor have a stroke from high blood pressure, right? So we’re going to begin this morning with a brief review of our purpose. We said we would explore the book of Revelation in three acts. Act number one is Christ revealed. It’s not just from Him. It is about Him. The book is about Jesus. Act number two is the Old Testament explored and expounded. And to remind you, what Hank Hanegraaff, used to be the Bible answer man, said that more than two-thirds of Revelation’s 400 verses are allusions to the Old Testament. We’ve already seen some of those. We will see some more this morning. And then thirdly, the truth applied. We aren’t supposed to just know things. We’re supposed to live it. This is what the Bible says in verse 3: “Blessed are those who keep what is written, for the time is near.” And we said that “keep” here is not a reference to memory. It is a living it out. Jesus says, “If you love Me, you keep My commandments.” And this is the same thing here. The New Living Translation says, “God blesses all who listen to its message and obey what it says.” That’s so very vital, because as we go through this this morning, and we’ll come back in future weeks as well.

Now we spent the first two weeks examining how viewing this book as a preview of coming attractions is counterproductive to Christian living. That is, if all we see are the predictions that cannot be accurate or many of them aren’t accurate, if we just get focused on them, we aren’t living anything. The book is predominantly about the unchanging nature of Christ, and its lessons are meant to be lived out. The constant stream of unfulfilled predictions, which cannot be lived out, serve only to make us look stupid and misinformed. But before turning our focus to Christ revealed, I must take another moment and unpack just a little more on the concept that we dealt with last time from the end of the book, Revelation 22. “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” Don’t add to, don’t take from. This is the message. And we pointed out that this came from the Old Testament. Here’s another one of those Old Testament allusions. Deuteronomy 4:2, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it.” And I told you last time, and I want to come back this morning again, to this concept. Because it is very easy, depending on your background, what you have been taught, who you’re listening to right now on Revelation. And you could come to this and say, “Well, that’s not what so-and-so said. That’s not what John MacArthur said. That’s not what David Jeremiah says. That’s not what Jonathan Cahn says. That’s not what this person says.” And depending on your background, if you’ve been told all this, you might think, “Well, pastor, you’re taking away from the Scripture.” Now, it’s very important. You can disagree with me. If you were to really read and study on the book of Revelation, which is part of what I want to do here, there’s so much diversity in the viewpoints of the book that there is great disagreement. I cannot tell you, you have to agree for everything I say about this book. But you cannot accuse me of taking something away from the Bible. Don’t do that. Because this is the kind of thing people would do. And people say, “Well, pastor, the Bible said, right there it says it. It says it right there.” And when you say, “That’s not what it means,” you’re taking away from the Bible. In most instances, that would be true. But in apocalyptic literature like the book of Revelation, it isn’t true. And we’ll have so much more to talk about as we go forward.

So we wanted to point out that we need to not look at it from a standpoint, “Well, that’s not what I was told,” so that’s taking away from the Bible. I might be taking away from what you’ve been told about it. I’m not taking away from the Bible. Secondly, we pointed out the focus of this warning isn’t upon the actual written text regarding any particular scene, but the revelation of God behind and in and through the text. This is the focus. This is what we’re not supposed to change. This is the understanding. We have to get that consideration. In talking about that, we noted how much of the Bible was added after Deuteronomy 4. So for those of you who don’t know, and I may be incorrect here, there are 66 books in the Bible, 27 in the New Testament, which should leave 39 in the New Testament. Okay? My math sucks, so I just wanted to make sure. 39 books in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy was the fifth book. If we look at them chronologically, Deuteronomy is the fifth book. That means 34 books were added after Deuteronomy says, “Do not add anything to the book.” Gives you a little more complexity and understanding the complexity of the Bible, doesn’t it? And what it means, what we must infer, is it means don’t add anything that contradicts the revelation of God already revealed in those first five books. Now to give you an example, so you know this isn’t what we’re talking, Joshua 24, verse 25 and 26: “Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God. Joshua added to the book, even though Deuteronomy says, ‘Don’t do that.’ It isn’t that there couldn’t have been additions, but there was no alteration in the revelation of God in that.”

Now I remind you, we said it last time, and it’s important. We believe in a closed canon. There are no more new revelations. There’s no more new information. We have plenty of it here. And if we were really honest, we can’t unpack all of this in 100,000 lifetimes before we can unpack all the scripture. We don’t need any new scriptures. But until the closing of the canon at the end of the book of Revelation, there were these things that were quote unquote added to the book, but they did not change the revelation of who God is. And that’s what it means when it says “don’t take away or don’t take from.” Now, I also have to say somewhere, I think I took that part of the book out, the message out, because this was a toughie. But what that means, one of the things that, one of the things that Revelation 22 means is we can’t all have our own ideas of truth. Because sooner or later, we’re going to be taking away or adding to. There has to be a central stream in the Christian faith that applies to everybody. Now, I’m not going to get off on that any further than that. That’s why I took it off the outline, and everybody say with me, “Stay with your outline, Pastor.” You were supposed to say it with me, not after me. But thank you anyway, at least you’re listening. Amen, amen. This is a very important understanding. We cannot just grab something and say, “Well, here’s what I think. This is how I say it. This is what I would believe. This is how I would explain it.” Because sooner or later, when that happens, we start getting outside the flow of Scripture. And this is important with respect to this concept of unbalanced predictions.

Now listen, Leon Morris says, based on verse number one, this revelation is concerned with prediction. He says the things, “to show Him the things that must soon take place.” There is a degree of prediction in the book of Revelation. We have to recognize and realize that there is a degree of foretelling to show His servants what must soon take place. And this appears again. This appears again in chapter four, verse one: “After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.'” There is an element of prediction in the Bible, in the book of Revelation. But here’s the key. The predictions are not meant to take the focus away from the predictor. It is a revelation being given to Jesus to show His people. But it is a revelation about Him, and we don’t get off on a bunch of crazy tangents.

Now let me give you a crazy tangent today to illustrate this stuff. Whenever I see something weird, crazy on Facebook, I save it on my phone, you know, take a screenshot, save it. And so I’ll have it for future reference. Here’s one that I saved, and I made a slide. You won’t be able to read the text, but I just put it there so you know this is a real Facebook post. And the woman says, she posts this guy, and he says, “From two separate sources, the earth is tilting, and within 18 months, Kentucky will be the new equator.” Now that was in June of 2024. And I don’t know about anybody else, but it has not felt like the equator around here this week. Amen? But she says, “I don’t doubt this. Isaiah 24 speaks of it as does the book of Revelation. Hailstones, 100 pounds, winds and waves roaring, the sea scorching mankind. This is just a taste of the judgment just ahead. Seal, trumpet, and the bowl judgments all predicted in God’s holy word.” True, but you’ve put a date on it now, and now you look like, “No, I’ve never, I’m still, I unfollowed her, unfollowed her, unfollowed, unfollowed, I unfollowed her, but we’re still friends, and so I just got that temptation to stick this back in there and say, ‘Do you remember posting this? That is nonsense.'”

So let me see, three things here on my outline. First note, the connection to the Old Testament, because she’s right, in Isaiah 24, it does say, “God, men are scorched by the heat of the sun,” and that is in Revelation. Okay, so Revelation, once again, is quoting from the Old Testament, and then, it has not been fulfilled, but there’s something else that’s wrong with it, and I’m going to let you tell me what it is. The date is wrong. There’s something else about the tilting. Okay, everybody in the room knows it. When I tell you, you know it, because you’ve all been to science class. The men, the men were scorched with heat from the sun. The earth is tilting. What happens when the sun, when the earth tilts? The southern hemisphere gets cold. It’s summertime in South America and Australia right now. Because the earth tilts. And if the world was tilting like this guy says, a big part of the world would be cold today, not being scorched by the sun. So this kind of prediction isn’t even scientifically accurate, much less biblically accurate. And how does that happen? Because we come to the book of Revelation looking for future preview of coming attractions instead of looking for Jesus Christ in the text of this scripture. This is what we have to be careful of.

Now, we keep going here for a moment on predictions. And I want you to just, I’m drilling down on this. I’m drilling down on this because I want us to, we won’t come away with the revelation of Christ if all we see is predictions. Most of which are not fulfilled and won’t be fulfilled just like we think. That verse, by the way, is, “The earth is tilting.” And she took that and jumped to Isaiah 24 in Revelation about the sun scorching people and that’s the scientific part. Either way, they’re both wrong. But it’s because they get caught up in predictions. Now, here’s another prediction that we can get caught up in. And that is, and we will deal with all these passages more depth as we go. And this is the one we talked about before but it’s got to be dealt with again this morning. The predictions about the so-called unlimited power of the Antichrist. This guy is going to just be, he’s going to, everybody’s going to be following him and bowing to him and etc. And this comes from Revelation chapter 13 and the wonderful number of the beast, the mark of the beast that people, Christian people, live in dread of. Some Wednesday nights ago we talked about it and Tammy who used to work at Dunkin’ Donuts said, “You know, that there is people would come in and if you got $6.66 on the thing they said, let me grab something else.” I’ll show you a funny story this week. I had sold, man, January is a good month for my books on Amazon and I got up to about $6.66 in royalties. That’s what it said. I looked on the phone and because you can keep up with it, it said $6.66. So I said, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I made a post and I posted on Facebook and I said, ‘My royalties are up to $6.66. I need somebody to buy another book.’ And guess what? Somebody bought a book just a few hours later and bumped my royalties up to $8.67. I’m saved. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”

Now, I don’t know whether they did it because of the post but there are people out there that live with that kind of fear that if I have $6.66, I’m doomed and I can’t have that. That’s superstition and it’s nonsense. Now, let us go to the Scripture itself. Revelation chapter 13. “All who dwell on earth will worship the beast.” And by the way, this is verse 13, verse 8 and 16 through 18. I didn’t have room for the reference. “All who dwell on earth will worship the beast. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world and the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. Also, the beast causes all, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark that is the name of the beast or the number of its name and his number is 666.” I always want to emphasize it says that the mark is either the name or the number. It does not say the mark is the number. It says it’s the name or the number and everybody’s running around like chickens with their head chopped off about 666 and they don’t realize that is the number of the name but not necessarily the mark.

Now, let me give you a couple thoughts here. Again, we’re dealing with predictions because people predict all kinds of stuff from the Antichrist. First, you’ve got to get the inconsistency because in most of the dispensational community, the church isn’t here when the Antichrist comes to power. We’re raptured out. We’re in heaven. And so it’s a question of why do we need to know so much about the Antichrist if we’re not even going to be here when the Antichrist comes to power. That’s an inconsistency in the argument. But the point I want you to see is that those predictions take away from the power of Christ to preserve His people through all things. This is part of the message of Revelation. Christ is sovereign and He keeps His people. He preserves His people. He will hold us fast as the song says. And this is the message that is taken away when we elevate and make all these predictions about the Antichrist.

Please notice who gets the mark. The worshipers of the beast. All who dwell on earth will worship the beast. And then down in verse 16 they receive the mark. It is not every person. It is the people worshiping the beast that take the mark of the beast. It is a very important consideration what this means. And by the way, those who take the mark are the ones whose names are not in the book of life. We can get into all the other implications, but this central one is the people who take the mark are worshiping the beast and their names are not in the book of life. What does that tell us? It is impossible for you as a Christian or any other person to accidentally or inadvertently take the mark of the beast. It is an act of worship. All who worship the beast will take the mark. It is an act of surrender to his claims and to his identity. You can’t go into the grocery store and buy something that costs $6.66 or get a debit card as I shared the one time and the security code on the back is 666. Oh Lord, I’ve got to send that back and get another card. That really happened to someone on Facebook that I saw where they posted it. You can’t get the mark because it’s an act of worship. Are you worshiping Christ and not his anti, his substitute? Then you cannot accidentally get the mark of the beast. This is so important, children, because what happens here is it is willful inner decision. That is, you’ve already made up in your mind your heart to take the mark so that the outside mark, if it’s literal, by the way, the outside mark is simply the expression of what’s already happened in your heart. We say this some Christians some of the Christian church says this about baptism. That baptism is a sign an outward sign of something that’s taking place in your heart. We don’t believe in baptismal regeneration. You’re not saved by the act of baptism but once you’re saved you should be baptized because it is a public outward expression I put my faith in Christ and it’s the same thing here. The Antichrist cannot steal your soul. He cannot grab you up even if we’re here when that happens and all of this is literal even if that’s true he can’t just grab you up and say “I got you.” That is taking away from Christ’s promise to preserve His people.

Listen to these passages and some of them are familiar but they’re important. “My sheep,” John 10:27 and 29, “my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Now you’ll hear people say this sometime. “Well, yeah, but I could walk out on my own.” First off, you’re going to have to he will hold me fast. You’ve got to pry the fingers of Jesus open to walk out of his hand. And a true Christian would not insist on the right to do that. But here’s the other thing. Here’s the other thing you have to see. That if you were able to do that you didn’t lose your salvation. You rejected your salvation. There is a difference there. And of course you know I don’t believe we can lose our salvation. And I base it on passages like this. They will never perish because they’re my sheep and I’m holding them fast and secure. The true believer, you know the person playing with God, the person who’s just got religion, they don’t have any salvation to lose. The true believer cannot lose what God has given him because he is committed to keeping us and holding us fast. And by the way, this is what Paul says in Romans. This is a long passage: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? I am sure neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation can separate us from the love of God that’s in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is the basis, the scriptural basis, for the idea that I’m secure in Christ and he will keep me and he will hold me fast.

What about these passages from Philippians 1:6, “I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Jude 1:24, “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.” When we make these kind of predictions about the Antichrist and we elevate him to have the kind of power that he can inadvertently snatch you away from Christ we are diminishing the glory of Christ. Now let me throw out one more thought here. What is salvation? For those of you who disagree with me, what is salvation? It’s the forgiveness of sins. To lose your salvation means you have forfeited God’s forgiveness. Forgiveness. Now what kind of act could you commit that would forfeit the forgiveness that’s already covered all of your other sins? Oh well you say, “Well the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the unpardonable sin.” Christians cannot commit that sin. Christians cannot commit that sin. We studied that a few Wednesday nights for those of you who don’t know what you’re missing on Wednesday evening. Let me move along. Now these promises we’ve looked at are meaningless. They’re meaningless if the beast can come along and grab you inadvertently, snatch you up and take you away from Christ. They’re meaningless. The greater problem you and I have always had and always will have until we are resurrected is this stuff. Here’s the real problem. It’s not the devil, it’s not my neighbor, it’s not my friends, it’s not the government, it’s not the terrorists, it’s my own heart that needs transformation. But it is precisely that reason that Christ won’t let me go because I can’t solve the problem on my heart. He must transform me and he will hold me despite those imperfections and struggles. But these promises are meaningless and this is what can happen, children, if we just focus on a prediction. Just run to the predictions and pretty soon we have an image and understanding of Christ that’s not consistent with the rest of the Scripture. So we have to deal with these challenges as we move forward in our journey and we should not dismiss them simply by saying, “Well we’re not supposed to take away from Scripture and that’s what you’re doing.” We’re not taking away from Scripture; we’re taking away from some of the things that we have imposed upon Scripture. “Don’t add or take from. Well then don’t add these kind of crazy things that end up leading the church astray.” Enough of that for today. We’ll have plenty more as we go down the road.

Now this morning we have another challenge to deal with. If we’re going to explore this book we have to deal with the challenges and one of the most prominent challenges that I didn’t make a slide for, 2,000 years after this book was written, what are we supposed to make of the statement, “these things must soon come to pass.” The King James, I believe, says “quickly.” How do we make sense of a book that says these things must happen soon and 2,000 years later we’re still waiting. I don’t know what your definition of soon or quickly is, but that ain’t it for me. I’m a man, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I am really impatient. I want it yesterday and that’s how it is. I want it right now, don’t get in my way, I’ll run over trying to get to it because I’m an impatient person and so I come to a passage like this and it says, “soon these things will happen,” and 2,000 years later we’re still saying, “this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen.” Now how are we supposed to deal with it, and by the way, it comes up again in the book, the end of the book, “he said to me, these words are trustworthy and true and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” The exact same phrase from chapter 1, the book opens with the phrase and it ends with the phrase, “these things must soon take place.” Thank you, but that’s not my point. To show, to show his servants what must soon take place. “Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of this prophecy of this book.” Chapter 2, verse 12, “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done.” Verse 20, “He who testifies to these things says, surely I am coming soon.” Now here’s our conundrum, and by the way, chapter 4, verse 1, by implication is making the same point, “the things that must take place after this,” and at the beginning of the book is “soon,” end of the book is “soon,” and we can infer “soon” in that passage. Here’s our conundrum: we’re promised a blessing for reading this book and applying this book and so we use it, we quote it, we reference it, we talk about it, we teach from it, we do all of this, and it is appropriate that we do that. But how are we to credibly answer the complication here? Coming, coming soon, 2,000 years later, coming soon. If we’re not careful, again, this is a larger point, but if we’re not careful we get caught up in the glamour of the predictions and we just skip right over the complexity here. How are we to answer this question? Well, if He said He was coming soon, then how come it hasn’t happened 2,000 years later? And if it is true that we cannot predict the coming of Christ, it might be 200 or 300 more years before He comes and we’ll have that complication, not a contradiction, but the complication grows. How are we supposed to answer this? Well, there’s lots of different ideas offered by the commentators and scholars and I’m going to give you two of them that I think are the most accurate and most precise because the others require a lot of other unpacking of other scriptures to show why that answer wouldn’t work. But here’s the two that I submit to you: it is an expression of certainty. It means not chronologically soon but it’s going to happen, end of story. This will take place. It’s going to occur. The second is, and this one I think is the most accurate, it is to signal that the beginning of these things are being fulfilled soon again, not chronologically but in the sense it’s already started. It’s already begun. Let me give you an illustration. It’s not perfect, but it will suffice. I hope this morning I want you to imagine a long parade, a long parade. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is about three hours long. There is a parade in Germany I can’t pronounce the word, but it’s a seven-mile parade route. Okay, so if you’re going south that’s about from here to Meem’s bottom. Okay, that’s seven miles. If you’re going north it’s out at the government buildings on the other side of the footstack, seven miles. Now the average human walks about two miles an hour, so it’s going to take about a seven-mile parade route is going to take about seven hours. Now let’s assume the parade starts at ten o’clock in the morning and you and I are down here at the end of the route at ten o’clock. We can say the parade has started. We haven’t heard the bands playing. We haven’t seen the floats come by. We haven’t seen the big inflatable Barney or whatever they’re floating around today in today’s parade. We don’t see any of that. But we can say the parade has started. And this is the concept that Grant Osborne in his commentary on Revelation says, “It is important to recognize that ‘soon’ in the New Testament is in time language intended to draw the reader into a sense of expectation and responsibility. It means God has initiated the events of the last days and we must ready ourselves for the end. It’s happening, and this again moves the book out of the predictive because it isn’t just something that’s going to eventually happen. It’s something that’s already happening since Christ was here and his ministry and resurrection and that again calls us to be careful about predictions because they can lead us astray. Yes, there are predictions in the book of Revelation and we will deal with some of those as we go forward. But the focus is not on the prediction or who can guess best of what it means. The focus is upon Jesus Christ. Now our three acts are Christ revealed, the Old Testament explored, and the truth applied. So let’s reverse the order and ask how do we apply these truths, avoid predictions that diminish the glory of Christ and cannot be lived out. It doesn’t matter, you know, we looked at the passage of chapter 9 the other week about the locust and how the one guy says they’re alien, it’s an alien invasion. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what you would do about an alien invasion if these people had the capacity to travel across the known universe. They have to be almost godlike in their personalities or their structure. And if they got this far across the universe safely, they probably have technological weapons far in advance of our own. We ought to just go on out and shoot ourselves if we were really aliens because we can’t do anything about that. It’s not on the outline, pastor, and I’ve told you to stay with your outline. You must live it out, children, and if you can’t live it, I don’t need to know about things that I can’t live. We live out the truths about Christ that’s the focus. Now let’s go back to the other two acts: Christ revealed, the Old Testament explored, and what you find in this section, which we read verse 5 from Jesus, actually it’s verse 4 as well. What you see is and stay with your outline, pastor. Jesus is one with the Father and Spirit in the Trinity. Jesus is the second member of the triune God. He is God and he should be worshipped and honored and served as God. We have some real challenges in our hearts and lives if we don’t realize and see that the Old Testament reveals Christ. Look at verse number 8 on your it’s on the it’s on the scripture or it’s on the it’s in the text: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who was, who is, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Over later in chapter 1 or chapter 2 as we get into the churches, Jesus uses that phrase for Himself: “I am the first and the last.” Now notice that Alpha and Omega are the Greek alphabet letters for the first and last letter of the alphabet. That’s why it’s not in the Hebrew. Alpha and Omega in the Hebrew it is the first and the last who has performed and done this calling the generations from the beginning, “I the Lord, the first and with the last, I am he.” Again in Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12 he says, “I am the first and I am the last,” and here in the New Testament Jesus is given that same title, the first and the last. He’s God. He’s being revealed as God, but the source of that revelation is the Old Testament.

Secondly, Jesus is the faithful witness. Isaiah 55:4: “Behold, I made him a witness to the people, as a leader and a commander of the peoples.” Let me read verse 5 from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. You see, John’s not just saying these things. He’s drawing from the Old Testament. Now notice this in Isaiah 55: “Behold, I made him a witness to the people, a leader, a commander for the peoples, the ruler of peoples.” But notice Psalm 89: “Once for all have I sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever. Who is his offspring? Christ. His offspring shall endure forever, like the moon. His offspring it his offspring shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” I had to come down to church this morning about seven o’clock because I wanted to make sure it was warm enough, cut the heat on downstairs and all that good stuff. And the moon, full moon. I love a full moon when you got snow. I call daylight moons a full moon just over the western horizon. And God says that’s the kind of faithful witness that Christ is. And this this that he’s referring to when he says Jesus is the faithful witness. Oh yes, he was a faithful witness in his life, obeying all that the Lord said, come, telling us all he was told to say. But it’s also true that scripturally from the old testament he is the faithful witness and then of course the third one is I don’t have a slide for it but is Jesus the purifying priest. Verse 5, verse the end of verse 5: “To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood.” And if you know your old testament, you know that is a symbol of the sacrificial lamb that Scott mentioned this morning that is memorized in our communion address. It is Jesus being revealed through the prism of the old testament. Now I want to give you one more thing and we’re done. I want to call your attention and please forgive me. Please forgive me if this comes across the wrong way. I am not trying to judge your level of commitment. Not but I want to remind those Christians whether here or watching through Facebook if you are bored with the Bible, there’s something wrong. I won’t say you’re not a Christian, but I will say there’s something wrong because this book is an ever never ending flow of wonder and majesty and even the smallest statements ring with significance. Let me read verse 1 again: “The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave Him gave Him gave Him.” I want to call your attention to the significance that can be found in the word give or gave. The word gave can be a word of commission, it can be a word of gifting or it can be a word of entrusting something to someone. God entrusted Jesus with this revelation. It is a word of entrusting someone to give is to entrust. God the Father has entrusted Jesus with His word and His people. Now to illustrate that, I’m going to jump to John’s gospel and read John 17, most of John 17. You don’t have to turn there because I’m I’m I’m going down through there but I want you to listen for how many times there’s enough reference to being given. Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You. Since You have given Him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him.” Verse 6: “I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world.” Have you ever thought about the fact that you and I are gifts from the Father to the Son? That’s why you can trust the Son will not fail in keeping you because you and I are gifts from the Father to the Son. Yours they were and You gave them to Me and they have kept Your word. For I have given them the words that You gave Me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom You have given Me. Now that does not mean Christ is not concerned about the world. It does mean that He has a special interest in the people the Father has given Him. I’m not praying for the world but for those whom You have given Me. For they are Yours, holy Father. Keep them in Your name which You have given Me. Given Me the people that I’m asking should be kept or given Me the name and the answer is both the name and the people have been given to Christ. Keep them in Your name which You have given Me that they may be one even as we are one. While I was with them I kept them in Your name which You have given Me. I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled. None of them were lost except the one that was supposed to be lost. The rest were kept secure by Christ. I have given them Your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are. Father, I desire that they also whom You have given Me may be with Me where I am to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. God the Father has entrusted Jesus with God’s people, with God’s word, with God’s name and with God’s glory and any perception of the book of Revelation that steals from those perspectives cannot be what the revelation is supposed to tell us. Amen.

Father God, thank You for allowing us to be together today and to unpack the scriptures and take this journey.