Revelation 1:1-3 Part 1
As was intimated in the introductory sermons, our standard exegetical
procedure ends up in a line-by-line exposition of the text of Scripture.
Here a little; there a little. Word by Word, line by line, concept by
concept until we know, as precisely as possible, what it says.
This is exactly what we did throughout the Gospel of Matthew; and there
is no change in that standard of procedure in our approach to The Revelation of
John.
We’re going to
read, and spend some time in, the title of John’s Revelation, which is found in
the first three verses. Hopefully, when we’re through with it, you’ll be
able to quote these verses and be able to teach them whenever the opportunity
arises.
Once again, let’s read:
1) A Revelation
of Jesus Christ which God gave to Him to show to His servants that which is
necessary to be done in quickness, and has made it known having sent through
His messenger to His servant John,
2) Who did bear
witness the Word of God and the witness of Jesus Christ all he saw.
3) Blessed the
ones reading and hearing the words of the prophecy and keeping things having
been written in it, for the time is near.
You remember, of course, the enormous amounts of study-and-preaching
time that we spent together in the Gospel of Matthew – much of which is
invaluable to us in setting the context to John’s Revelation. And I want
to remind you this morning of a number of things that we learned as we went
through the Gospel.
First let me call to your attention that it is Jesus Christ (The
Cornerstone) and His apostles (the remainder of the foundation) that form the
bed-rock of the new temple made without hands. It is the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, through His apostles, that constitutes the Rock upon which the Church
is built, each of His “little ones” precious stones in the structure of the
temple. It is apostolic doctrine - preaching and teaching - that is the
very voice of the Christ…… Living Water flowing into the arid wastelands of
pagan nations, causing many all over the fallen and cursed earth to sink their
roots deeply into the river of living water. We have the preaching and
teaching of His apostles; and we have all been warned that anything other than
apostolic doctrine is anathema. They are the “scribes” of the new
Jesus’ last word to them before His ascension was that they disciple
the nations, putting His covenant “mark” of baptism on them, and teaching them
to obey the One Who has been given all authority in the heavens and upon the
earth (Matthew 28).
Secondly, Jesus had told His disciples to continue to scour the
countryside for every last one from the tribes of
Having given them the signs of coming destruction of
The massive job of doing that was hampered by the fact that most of
these who God had kept for Himself were the poor and the sick and the
dispossessed and the lame and the blind and the deaf…… all of which had been
brought about by Israel’s false shepherds, often called ravenous wolves,
feeding on the helpless for their own benefits. But Jesus had come to
find His Father’s elect; and the apostles were to continue to hunt for them
after the resurrection! All of them had to be found, and all of them had
to be moved from harm’s way before the abomination of desolation.
So the apostles, along with newly elected deacons, prepared (as the
first chapters of The Acts of the Apostles indicates) the diaspora – the
extrication of all of those who God had kept for Himself from the twelve tribes
of
Those with wealth in property and other valuables sold everything (it
would soon be worthless anyway). And they pooled the money, giving it to
the apostles for the poor who couldn’t move themselves out of
Many of these were the ones following Jesus, hundreds of them having
been healed by Him of their leprosy, their blindness, their deafness, their
demon possession, their brokenness, their destitution – all as a result of the
savage godlessness of judaistic leadership (and all of this prophesied by the
prophet Isaiah).
Having questioned Jesus about what was going to happen (Matthew 24),
the apostles knew, from His answer, that this was all going down in their
lifetimes; so they had a very short time to get all these people out of harm’s
way.
The entirety of the remainder of the New Testament was written during
this period – thirty five to forty years. The apostles and
their helpers continued to travel the whole of Israel, finding the lost sheep
of the house of Israel; the Church in Jerusalem continued to feed the sheep
with the Gospel and with relocation assistance; some of the apostles were
preaching the Gospel in the nations and helping the new Churches that were
being established by the relocating Jewish Christians; the letters to the Churches
by Paul and James and Peter and Jude and John were letters of correction and letters of comfort to all the
“little ones” in very perilous and distressing times.
Thirdly, Jesus had warned His apostles that they, and the Churches,
would suffer many things. And, certainly, the persecution of the Roman
emperors, during a time of turmoil and upheaval in the empire, was a major
factor in those perilous times for the Church.
But by no means was that the only factor; and neither was it the most
malignant.
Jesus, in Matthew chapter 23, in excoriating the judaists, told them
that they had humiliated, maimed and killed the prophets that God had sent to
them (even to John the baptizer). And now Jesus was going to send the
apostles to preach the Gospel to all the nations. And that the judaizers
were going to crucify them and scourge them and persecute them from city to
city! And, for that, all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from
Able to Zechariah would be upon them. And it would come in this
generation!
So, you see, the Church of Jesus Christ was going to suffer at the
hands of
So, not only did the new Churches in the nations need correction from
Paul and the others, but they needed much comfort. These who God had held
for Himself (the lost sheep of the house of Israel) had to leave their homeland
of a thousand years, they had to establish new homelands, new jobs, new
households, new everything! The beloved nation of King David and King
Solomon, according to Jesus and his apostles, was about to experience great
tribulation. Daniel’s abomination of desolation was about to come upon
them (according to Luke it was the Roman armies), the temple and the ceremonial
system and the sacrificial system and the priesthood and everything else about the
promised land was about to be crushed, dissolved and discontinued; for God was
adjudicating, in King Jesus, the covenantal sanctions against Israel.
Thus the letters of comfort from the apostles – including this letter
from John. Surely there is correction for the Churches, and exhortation
for perseverance; but the letter is primarily a letter of comfort and
preparation for that which was shortly to come. For, as Jesus told His
apostles in Matthew 24, nothing like it had ever occurred. People all
over the world would be shocked and grieved, especially these expatriated
Jewish Christians. They were going to suspect that the end of the world
had come upon them.
But John lays it all out there for them exactly what to expect; and he
comforts them in the terror that is about to befall them and their
nation. Persevere, be faithful, and don’t faint! God the Son, the
resurrected and ascended Savior of the world, the King of Kings and Lord of
Lords is doing it, and glory be to His holy Name. Come quickly Lord Jesus.
Now. Having briefly reviewed some of the things we learned from
our study in Matthew, let me now take you to a short foray into the historical
and geographical context leading to the letter that we find before us this
morning.
John and his brother James were in the fishing business with their
father Zebedee. The business was located around the
John is well-known in history as the “theologian” of the group, as is
evidenced by his gospel, and by his three letters to the Churches.
Sometime during the thirty-five years after Jesus’ resurrection, John’s
ministry to the Lord’s people in the nations took him to the city of
The Scripture locates these Churches as being in “
In
It was late in Nero’s rule that John, preaching the Gospel in Asia
(part of Nero’s empire) was exiled to the
It was probably uninhabited then, except for rejects from other
places. Men were probably sent there to eliminate them from mainland
societies. Since it was primarily uninhabited, exiles were expected to
just die there.
But, as his text says, John received the Revelation while he was
there. And apparently, somehow he sent copies back to the mainland – to
all seven of his Churches which were clustered there close to each other in
(what is now) the far western portion of
Inasmuch as we know that the letters of all of the apostles and Gospel
writers were circulated among most (if not all) of the Churches in the nations,
this letter too would have been copied and sent abroad to as many of the Lord’s
people as possible.
That copying and circulation would have had to be done quickly, because
the Revelation made it clear that the events to occur were “near”. Caesar
Nero ordered a crushing of the rebellion in
And, by the way, just as a historical note here, I sat down inside the
Roman Coliseum a few years ago just to contemplate the history there. The
building of that infamous structure was begun while Titus was in
But before we finish today, we need to address at least one word in the
translation. And that word that I want to spend some time on is the first
word that John wrote. It’s also the word at the top of the page. We call
the letter “The Revelation” because of the first word of the letter.
Please note that the word isn’t plural. Many people call it
“revelations”; but it is not several, or many, revelations. It is one
Revelation.
The Greek word, transliterated into English, is apocalypse.
Please erase it from the deep recesses of your minds that this word means
“doomsday”. Don’t even think about it. From pagans to the Christian
Church….. we’ve been conditioned to associate “apocalypse” with world-ending,
history-terminating, nature-dissolving finality! That’s mostly because of
the mistranslation and/or misinterpretation of this letter.
From commentaries, to fiction books, to pulpiteering, to artistic
renderings, to movies…….. apocalypsis is associated with holocaust!
A post-Vietnam era film called Apocalypse Now had dozens of
heavily-armed helicopters flying low into the Mekong Delta while playing
Wagnerian opera over loudspeakers. It was to frighten the Viet Cong into
believing it was their doomsday!
The film Apocalypto is a holocaust scenario about Incas and Mayans in
Most Roman Catholic and Evangelical theologizing envisions a final
battle of world-wide proportions, followed closely by a final judgment and
destruction of the world in a flaming inferno. And all of that is
associated with the word “apocalypse”.
But all of that is just a case of reading something back into this word
that’s not there. The word simply means “revelation”, or
“disclosure”.
A good example of the word can be found in Paul’s letter to the Church
at
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy
to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward. For the
earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by
reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be
delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God.”
So. Finally, John’s letter is one of exhortation, and one of
comfort, to the Lord’s people who are about to see and experience some
incredible things. And those things are “revealed” or “uncovered” to
John, who writes them down and sends it in a letter to seven Churches.
I leave you with an exhortation from Spurgeon (Metropolitan Tabernacle
in
He said: “We are not discouraged by the length of his delays; we are not disheartened by the long period which he allots to the church in which to struggle with little success and much defeat. We believe that God will never suffer this world, which has once seen Christ's blood shed upon it, to be always (evil’s) stronghold. Christ came hither to deliver this world from the detested sway of the powers of darkness. What a shout shall that be when men and angels shall unite to cry ‘Hallelujah, hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!’ What a satisfaction will it be in that day to have had a share in the fight, to have helped to break the arrows of the bow, and to have aided in winning the victory for our Lord! Happy are they who trust themselves with this conquering Lord, and who fight side by side with him, doing their little in his name and by his strength! How unhappy are those on the side of evil! It is a losing side, and it is a matter wherein to lose is to lose and to be lost for ever. On whose side are you?”