Greetings from He Who Is Coming

Transcript

GR 1978
10/9/2016
Greetings from He Who Is Coming
Revelation 1:5-8
Gil Rugh

We have just begun a study of the last book of the bible, the Book of Revelation. So turn in your bibles, if you would to Revelation 1. The first eight verses form the introduction to the book and we’re just working our way through that introduction. The things that are somewhat compacted there and much of that then will be unfolded through the rest of the book.

We just get a little bit of a preview in some ways of the Revelation God has given for His churches. It is important for us to understand this is church truth. Revelation God has given to give His churches understanding of His purposes and plans, to mold to shape and guide their lives. We noted in Revelation 1:3 “blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are in in.”

It is a very practical book. It is talking about future things. In fact the bulk of the book will be talking about things that happened when the church is no longer on earth but He writes it to the churches. Initially seven churches, this we will see when we get to Revelation 2 but for the benefit of churches down through the ages, down to us. And it is to shape and control their lives. They are to give heed to it, they are to do it, live in light of what He says here.

What a blessing in our world that seems sometimes chaotic, unsure. You turn on the news, you don’t know what will be next. We are going to vote for a president and it is going to be this person, this person or someone different. There’s terrorism, there’s confusion and everything is in order because God is sovereignly controlling it all and the Book of Revelation is a reminder of that to us. And the future is bleak but for us who are believers it’s a future of blessing. The world is not going to get better. What was called post millennialism, we’ll talk about these things later said that the world would get better and better until the Kingdom came in. We would bring it in by all the good things we do. Do you believe in the 19th century the major theologies that were written were written from that perspective? There has been a revival of that kind of thinking. The Book of Revelation makes it clear that it’s not going to get better its going to get much worse. That’s not to discourage us. God has not given this revelation to discourage His people, to cause them to be fearful but is to encourage us so that we understand that God is at work in the world and His purposes are being done. When all is said and done we get to the last chapter we’re living in glory, in the very presence of the living God on a new earth with new heavens more wonderful than we can imagine.

So we’ve come down through these verses. Revelation 4 said he is writing to the seven churches and this message is a message of grace and peace from God. Interesting we are going to talk about turmoil in the world. Situations in which billons of people on this planet will die during a time when Jesus said that if He didn’t intervene at the end of seven years there wouldn’t be a person left alive on the face of the earth.

And He says grace and peace to you. God’s ongoing grace that sustains and enables us. His peace that brings comfort and joy to our hearts as His people. “It comes from Him who is, who was and who is to come.” That’s referring to God the Father, “and from the seven Spirits before the throne”.

We’ve looked at this from the Holy Spirit and from Jesus Christ in verse five. Here we have the three persons that comprise the one God brought before us at the beginning of this tremendous revelation and John wants us to experience the grace that He provides as His people, for His people to live day by day. The peace that He brings to a heart that keeps us from fear and uncertainty, discouragement, depression. We have the peace of God which surpasses human understanding, standing guard at our heart and mind as Paul put it in Philippians 4. He put the order coming from God the Father, then God the Spirit and then God the Son because he is going to elaborate on Jesus Christ.

He is described in verse 5. “From Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.” That threefold description of Christ we were talking about in our previous study. He is called the faithful witness and we noted that that ties to His testimony given before Pontus Pilate. And in 1 Timothy 6:13 Paul tells Timothy that Christ “testified a good testimony, witnessed a good confession before Pilate and He is the One whose testimony is always faithful.” And so the truth that is being revealed from the Father, through Him down to John is also a faithful testimony. He’s the “firstborn of the dead” and we noted that word, firstborn. It refers to His priority, His supremacy. Sometimes the Old Testament referred to first in time, the firstborn child, the firstborn son usually would have preeminence and priority in certain ways and the word comes to carry that connotation, whether the first in time or not.

He is the firstborn of the dead and He is the first to receive a glorified body in resurrection, to be sure. But He is the One who has supremacy and rules over all that realm as we will see when we get down to verse 18. “I am the living One; I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, I have the keys of death and of Hades” denoting His authority, His supremacy and His control. He is the firstborn of the dead. He is the ruler of kings of the earth. He will someday establish a Kingdom on the earth over which He will rule supreme.

As we concluded our previous study I said that all three of these names or descriptions of Christ are drawn from an Old Testament Psalm, Psalm 89. And I encourage you to maybe take the time to read Psalm 89 sometime this week and you’d be prepared and I know I’ve had kids so come back to Psalm 89. You may have not gotten to it. Psalm 89, we noted the Book of Revelation is filled with hundreds of references to the Old Testament but not direct quotes. I was talking with you about the fact how blessed we are to have our Bibles.

So let’s turn to Psalm 89. You understand the churches did not have their own copies of the bible so the seven churches of Asia, they would have to sit and listen. We have a letter sent to us from John the Apostle and they would sit there while these, as we have it, 22 chapters are read to them. They couldn’t go back and forth from the Old Testament to the New. In time the teachers would teach that, explain to them but what a blessing it is we can just turn back to Psalm 89. Look at verse 3. “I have made a covenant with My chosen; I sworn to David My servant, I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations.” The promise to David that “His descendant would sit on the throne and rule forever” is what He is talking about. “Establish your seed forever, build up your throne to all generations” and ultimately that will be realized of course in Christ.

Come down in the passage for time to verse 27. “I also shall make him My firstborn,” and you pick up that concept; the One who will be made His firstborn, giving Him priority, supremacy, the highest of the kings of the earth. You see these concepts that we just read in Revelation 1:5 and the names and the titles. They are in connection with the covenant established with David which was recorded by Samuel. What we call the Davidic Covenant. Here parts of it are repeated and where they’re reminded, “I will make Him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.” That’s the same thing as the rulers of the kings of the earth. After referring to Him as the firstborn of the dead in Revelation I’ll make Him the ruler of the kings of the earth. It is basically a reference without a direct quote. I’ll make Him My firstborn. He’ll have supremacy and priority and He will be the highest of the kings of the earth. He will rule over the kings of the earth is the point.

He is the faithful witness and that element would come out; God promises that in verses 33-37. We’ll pick up with verse 35. “Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His (seed); descendants shall endure forever, his throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established forever like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful.” And the realization of this, Christ is the faithful witness, in the presence of the moon and the sun and their ongoing presence, day after day, night after night. That’s compared to God’s faithfulness and in the same such way the fulfillment in the seed of David would be a faithful witness, testifying to God and His trustworthiness and the fulfillment of His promises.

So amazing how the Spirit has directed the Apostle John to draw on these truths. They’re not new but now they come with a clarity since Christ has come. As we noted the Book of Revelation is so filled with Old Testament references people don’t, well we just take it piece by piece and it’s not that difficult. It’s a revelation. I will keep reminding you. It’s an uncovering, an unveiling. They’ll say it is such a confusing book. Well part of it is, we’re not as familiar with the Old Testament as we might be with other portions so some of these references we say, “where did he get that, why would he say that?” We come back and find it is in the context of God making promises and so on and so now we move and see that anticipated Christ.

Come back to Revelation 1:5. He mentioned Christ as third among the persons of the Godhead. He first referred to the Father, then the Holy Spirit, then the Son because he is elaborating on the Son because He is the focal point. He’s the One who came to earth and accomplished redemption so we have at the end of verse five, “To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood—“ and you have an ascription here of praise. A doxology you could call it to Christ for what He does and has done. He’s the One who loves us.

Some of you are taking some Greek. This is a present participle, “One who is loving us,” denotes it is present, it is continuous, and it is ongoing. We’re ascribing praise to the One who continuously loves us, if I can put it that way? And He released us. Now we have an aorist participle a-o-r-i-s-t for aorist. The normal way to speak in the past tense. He is loving us because He has released us. Loosed us from our sins by His blood. He released us from our sins by His blood, He’s loving us. The two go together. The one is ongoing, the release took place at a point in the past.

We are familiar with the verse, ”For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order that who so ever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life.” God’s love manifested and demonstrated to provide a savior. Christ was that Savior so He came and loosed us, released us from our sins. The picture is before we experience the work of Christ in our lives we were bound by our sin. We were held in the chains of sin as we would speak. It controlled us, it dominated us, it ruled our lives. We were enslaved to sin. That’s the picture that we have. That’s true of every single person on the face of the earth. Bound, enslaved in chains to sin. It’s control. The whole world says, why would they do that? What are they thinking? They are bound in their sin. They are controlled by their sin. They are accountable for it, but it rules them.

Come back to John 8, the Gospel of John, Chapter 8. We will look at the Book of Romans in a moment where we are told “all have sinned there is none righteous not even one.” All have sinned. Then in John 8:34, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. “ It’s that simple. He says, all have sinned and everyone who sins is the slave of sin. People like to think, they’re their own person. They are free. I control my life, I control my destiny, I make my own decisions, I’m my own person. That’s a lie. You do make responsible decisions but they’re always under the domination and control of sin and you know the spirit force behind that, John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, you want to do the desires of your father.” That’s the thing, the sin that controls me has corrupted me within and without so my inner being, I have a desire for sin and we have seen that in our world and our country even in recent years how it seems sin has blossomed. Why? Well it became more acceptable. Now you can express that. Isn’t it amazing what is coming out of the hearts of people? That they would be gone to this point. He was a murderer from the beginning, he was a liar and murderers and lies come from the devil. Murders and lies come from the devil and so verse 41 says, “You do the deeds of your father.” That’s the condition of people apart from Christ. Verse 36 says, “If the Son makes you free you will be free indeed”. That’s what John is talking about.

The apostle John was the human writer God used for both the gospel of John and the book of Revelation. He is well familiar with this material. Christ loosed us from our sins by His blood. That’s foundational. It took His death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. We still use the analogy. We talk about in a war or conflict there was much bloodshed. We’re not talking about the amount of the blood that came out of wounds, we’re talking about people died. That’s what the picture is here in the shedding of His blood. He gave His life. He died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin.

You know the bible is God’s revelation. Without that we we’re in a world of aimless confusion. We have people thousands of years after the bible’s been written and they think they’re going to be saved by their baptism, by religious activity, by doing this kind of deed or that kind of deed, by being a murderer who kills infidels so they can go to some kind of sensual heaven. How sad. Wait, wait, wait, there is nothing you can do to free yourself from the penalty and power of sin. It doesn’t matter if you live to be a million years old, you would never do anything to forgive, to free yourself, to gain forgiveness, liberty. Christ did it. He can set you free. That’s why we don’t try to tell people that are living in sin, well you ought to stop the sin. What do you mean? Well don’t do that kind of sin. Well the problem is they are enslaved to sin.

Come to Ephesians and we have to move on. Ephesians 2. Why do I tell you we have to move on since I’m the one holding us up? Ephesians 2:1. Note what he says, another picture. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins” because we were living enslaved to our sin and we were cut off from any relationship to God. We were separated from Him which is the concept in death. Physical death the body is separated from the spirit, “the body without the spirit is dead” James 2 says. When you are spiritually dead you are separated, cutoff from God. We were dead in our trespasses and sin. He is writing to the church at Ephesus which will be one of the seven churches. The first of them mentioned in Revelation 2. You people that comprise this church now who are the saints at Ephesus, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. “You formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we all too formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh, of the mind and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest.” So none of us are exceptions. If you think you are an exception to what God says about your sin and your slavery to sin you’ve never been saved. Because salvation doesn’t come until your eyes are opened and you realize you are a sinner and your only hope is Jesus Christ and the payment He made to set you free. So He released us from our sins by His blood and He is loving us, continually loving us. It doesn’t get any better than this. We won’t go back but John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That’s what Christ did to pay the penalty for our sins.

Back up to the Book of Romans 8. You see this ongoing love that is never interrupted. This is amazing. The eternal almighty God loves us with a permanent love. The Son of God who loved us and died on the cross continually loves us and so Romans 8:33 “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one that condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” You note it is all what Christ has done.

My salvation is based upon the fact that Christ died for me and I have placed my faith in Him alone as the One who is my Savior and as a result I have been set free from the power and control of sin in my life. I’ve been cleansed from the defilement. Nobody can charge me and bring me under condemnation. That doesn’t mean I never sin but the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing me. It does not excuse me of my accountability to God as His child. But it does mean no one will ever be able to judge me with condemnation because Christ died, He was raised and He intercedes for me.

Hebrews 7:25 says that “He ever lives to make intercession for us.” So if we as believers sin we have “an advocate a representative with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous and He is the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sin.” 1 John 2:1, 2. Amazing! Note how he goes on here in Romans 8:35. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword?” All the things that can come upon you in this sin cursed world. Is that going to come between Christ and me? Martyrdom is what he talked about in verse 36. Verse 37-39 and “all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Could it get any clearer?

He loves us, He loves us. The problem is we don’t experience that in our present society at this time but other parts of the world it is a much more serious situation for them. They may have to give their life in their testimony for Christ. Many have down through the years and the enemy thought they won but they didn’t. “Jesus said, ‘don’t fear those who kill the body but afterwards cannot do anything to harm the soul. You better fear Him who after He has killed the body is able to destroy body and soul in Hell.’” They can kill this body. They can’t cut me off from the love of Christ, the love that God has for me. Isn’t it amazing? Sometimes when we are going through difficulties and trials we say, Oh Lord do you really love me? That’s a questions I don’t even have to ask. I can come and read it in the word and I can say, Oh Lord thank you for the assurance. I know you love me. I may not understand why you are taking me through this misery, this trial why I am going to be martyred.

John writes the Book of Revelation while he’s in exile on the Island of Patmos as we will see. Not pleasant but he wasn’t cut off there from the love of God that was his in Christ. We ought to have a great pity on those in the world who are still chained in their sin, cut off from God’s love because they have not yet turned to the Savior.

Come over to 1 John 3. We are just going to read parts of verses. Verse 16. “We know love by this that He laid down His life for us.” That’s how much He loved us. “Greater love has no man than this and he gave his life for friends.” And we are to reflect that in our relationships with one another. Come down to 1 John 4:9 “By this the love of God was manifested (displayed) in us; that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” Remember “we were dead in our trespasses and sins,” Ephesians 2:1 said. God had His Son come into the world so we could be made alive spiritually.

”And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation.” It means to satisfy by turning away the wrath of a holy God from us. You understand that we were children of wrath as we read in Ephesians 2 before our salvation. We lived under the cloud of God’s wrath. We were people doomed and destined to an eternal hell but Christ came and died so that in Him we might be rescued, set free from bondage to sin, made alive and new to live in an eternal relationship with the living God, and be the objects of His unending love. How amazing is His grace! How wonderful is His salvation!

Come over to Revelation 1:5 again. No wonder He gives a description of praise to Christ, a doxology “To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood—“(How amazing!) ”and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father-- to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” I mean our being made kingdom and priests is the result of being released from our sins and now the objects of His continuous love and that involves Him making us to be a kingdom. We’re not that kingdom yet, but He is preparing us as those who will be the inhabitants of the Kingdom that He will establish.

That’s where we’re building to in the book of Revelation. It will take us until Chapter 20 to where that Kingdom that will be what is talked about in Chapters 20, 21, 22. Our eternal dwelling in the eternal Kingdom. He made us to be a Kingdom. That is what Colossians 1:13 is talking about. “He transferred us from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light.” It’s the Kingdom of His beloved Son. We don’t belong to Satan anymore, we belong to God. We sing the song, Now I belong to Jesus, Jesus belongs to me, Not for the years of time alone but for eternity. That’s where the Book of Revelation is taking us in anticipation of that Kingdom. We are priests to God, His God and Father.

We studied the Book of Hebrews, what happens? The priest was the the one who was a go between, between God and men in the Old Testament. Then Jesus Christ came and He established a new priesthood, not a Levitical priesthood as we had in the Old Testament but a priest after the Order of Melchizedek. And with a change of priesthood there is a change of the covenant. With the change of the covenant, there’s a change of the priesthood. We saw in the Book of Hebrews, the priest established after the Order of Melchizadek and he has made us as priests now. So He is the high priest and we now as believer priests have direct access to the presence of God. We have no men to stand between us and God. That’s a pagan system that denies the work and provision of Christ that establishes an order of priests between God and men. Each believer is a priest so we are exhorted to come with boldness to a throne which to us is a throne of grace in Hebrews 4. Bring our requests directly to Him. I don’t have to search out a priest. I’m not your priest. You don’t have to search out me and bring your request to me so I can take them to God. You can take them to God. We can join in praying for one another but not because we don’t have the direct access ourselves to God but so that we together can go to God with our requests. He’s made us to be priests to His God and Father.

What else can you say? To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. You just have to give praise, honor to Him. Think of what Christ has done and that is what he elaborates here. It’s the work of the Father and the work of the Spirit but the person of the Godhead who has come to carry out and accomplish God’s plan of salvation is Jesus Christ and so he is elaborating and give Him praise. In that we give praise to the Father. “He said, ‘he who honors me honors the Father. If you don’t honor me, you don’t honor the Father because there is only one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’” Three persons, not three Gods. Not one person. Wow, that is a mind stretcher. You bet it is. We realize how small we are but we belong to a great God. To Him be the glory and dominion.

That connects us back. He’s made us to be a Kingdom that’s not been realized yet. To Him dominion will come. He rules over all in the general sense of course. He is King over all and His Kingdom is over all but there is a specific Kingdom prophesied that is yet future. We have looked at this on other occasions, this prophetic Kingdom is what we are anticipating as the ultimate end of our salvation which we will see when we get to the closing chapters of Revelation. That word, Amen. It’s true. The King James Bible I believe translates truly, truly, I say to you. Amen, Amen. It means something is true, it is confirmed, it’s settled.

Now you come to verse seven. Verse seven you ought to have marked. This is the theme verse of the book of Revelation. You say, what is the key verse, the theme of the Revelation? It’s contained in verse 7. Now we already have something we can get out arms around so to speak on the book of Revelation. “Behold He is coming in the clouds and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.” It’s confirmed, it’s true.

You see what it is about. We’re building so the events from Chapter four on and particularity Chapter six will be those events that unfold in a sequential way what is leading up to the return of Christ when He will come with clouds and every eye will see Him. It unfolds in Chapter 19 so “Behold He is coming with the clouds.” Behold is a word that will be used three other times in the book of Revelation. It is calling special attention to something. It’s used over thirty times in Revelation, three of those times refer to the coming of Christ. When you think about it, I want you to pay attention. Like you tell your kids, listen, and pay attention to what I am telling you. We will have that 30 times in the book of Revelation. Here we have it. “Behold,” pay attention children, what God is saying to us. Listen carefully and He’s going to unfold. “He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him.” So it is to be, amen,” this is settled. As we would say it is in concrete. It can never be altered, it can never be changed.

It is sure. And that is a great comfort to us. God has promised it. It is drawn from other passages in scriptures. We are going to look at three basically. Two of them from the Old Testament, the book of Daniel. Daniel 7. And what Daniel gets is the unfolding of future empires. We studied this not long ago. Same thing as is found in Daniel 2 of Daniel with different images than we have in Daniel 7. And I want you to see the terminology. “Behold, He’s coming with clouds of heaven” and so on. Look down in verse nine. We’re after the climax of these earthly empires. “I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat;” this is referring to God the Father and you notice that Daniel saw a visual manifestation of the presence of the Father. Sometimes we think, well we’ll never see the Father, God is a Spirit. He is but we will see when we get to the end of Revelation, well even the Father will manifest Himself in visible ways. You will see this with the Spirit also. “His vesture was like white snow and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne ablaze with fire.” Jump down for time to verse 13. “I kept looking in the night visions, (now note this) and behold, (here’s our word behold) with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming.” You see how we have not a direct quote but John picks up the concept and idea that behold He is coming with the clouds of heaven.“Behold with the clouds of heaven one like the Son of Man was coming, and He comes to the Ancient of Days was presented before Him. To Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.”

Come over to Zechariah 12. Zechariah is the next to the last book in your Old Testament. Zechariah 12 and we just pick up for time in verse ten. In this future time, which we’re building to, climax of Chapter 19 of Revelation when Christ comes this is what is anticipated in verse seven. “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced;” That is what John said in Revelation 1:7 “Every eye will see Him, even those that have pierced Him; referring particularly to the Jews that have a special accountability in the crucifixion of Christ and their leaders said, “let his blood be on our hands.” They bear a special accountability. But every eye will see Him but a special focus on those who were guilty of His crucifixion looking for the Jews. “and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” And Christ is the firstborn and that’s the point.

We won’t go there for time but Romans 11:26 says, “And thus all Israel will be saved.” Because at that point Israel, as the result of seven years of unspeakable suffering, the nation Israel is finally broken so they become what the beatitudes say in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now they realize; what have we done? He’s our Messiah, we’ve crucified Him, He’s our Savior and they turn to Him. So there is a mass turning to Christ among the Jews and they experience His salvation. But you note here, “they will look on Him whom they have pierced.” John picked that up.

Come over to Matthew 24 in the discourse given on the Mount of Olives, Christ talked about events that will tie more in detail to what is in Revelation. And after we go through the events of Revelation 6-19 we have in verse 30 of Matthew 24. “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn.” Zechariah focused particularly on the Jews who were directly guilty for His crucifixion. And now all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And there is something manifested in the majesty and glory of the clouds and He will be coming in those clouds and every eye will see Him.

There will be two kinds of mourning going on when Christ returns. There will be the mourning of those who recognize their sin and guilt like the Jews in mass will be doing. They will be like the verse in the beatitudes, “Blessed are those who mourn.” They will recognize their sin, their guilt and they turn to Christ.

But there will also be the mourning of those who stubbornly reject Him and they face imminent judgment. The book of Revelation gives strong focus on that as well. So you come back to Revelation 1:7 and read it again now with the verses we’ve read. “He is coming with the clouds, every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him.” So, John picks out here what has been said, “Every eye will see Him,” but he picks up also Zechariah, “They will look on Him whom they have pierced” because Zechariah particularly focused on the Jews but here John brings them both. “Every eye will see Him even those who pierced Him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.” You see what that does? That pulls together all the book of Revelation is about building to His coming in the clouds. That is the climax because it is as a result of that that we will ultimately see the destruction of the wicked and an eternal hell at the end of Chapter 20 and the dwelling of the righteous who have redeemed from their wickedness in the new heavens and the new earth in the eternal presence of the triune God.

So he says in verse 8. This brackets it. Remember in verse 4 we had the Father referred to. “Grace and peace to you from Him who is and who was and who is to come.” We said that’s a reference to God the Father because He mentions Christ at the beginning of verse 5. It comes from the Holy Spirit and from Jesus Christ. Now in verse 8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” The Alpha and the Omega that’s the first letter and the last letter of the Greek alphabet. That same thing as we would say, the beginning and the end. We talk about from A to Z. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. He encompasses all. He is the eternal all sovereign God. He is the almighty.

Come back to Isaiah 41. Look at verse four. We will just pick up the end of the verse for time. Isaiah 41:4 at the end of the verse. “I, the Lord, am the first, and the last. I am He” Over to Isaiah 43:10, the end of the verse. “Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and there is no savior besides Me.” Verse 13. “I am from eternity I am He, there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act, who can reverse it? “

You see that emphasis that He is the only God, the God who has always existed and the only God who has ever existed. He is all-powerful. Aren’t you glad the verse is there? “There is no savior besides Me.” If it wasn’t that He intervened, to be Himself the Savior there would be no savior. You understand that God could have sentenced us all to hell and been just and righteous. Stop and think. That’s what He did with the angels. They sinned. He never provided a savior. He is not a Savior to the angels. Those angels who sinned will spend an eternity in hell. Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels without ever providing a second chance or a savior to redeem them. But for us there is a Savior. How say it people would fail to respond to Him.

More verses but we don’t have time. He’s the almighty, all things are under His hand, He is all-powerful, He rules over all. This title will be used for God eight times more in the book of Revelation. God is displaying His all awesome power. You know those who oppose us, those who oppose the truth we present, they’re not all powerful. Why do they seem to be so successful? Because in God’s plan He is letting sin run its course but there is a day of judgment coming that cannot be avoided because the all-powerful God says it’s so.

So a great way to introduce us to the book of Revelation. We’re the ones who are the objects of God’s continuing love because He set us free by taking our place and dying for us. He’s prepared us for a glorious future. There are going to be difficulties and trials that will come and ultimately in the seven years leading up to Christ’s return things will be the worse than they have ever been. But we will talk about where the church will be at that time before we move into those prophetic chapters but we know the last chapter. Where is this world going? What’s going to be the outcome? Say, I can tell you, I read the last chapters. We know the end so are we discouraged, disappointed, not at all. Thank you God for your continuing love, your redemption. I serve You day by day in anticipation of the realization of all you’ve promised me. Why would you miss that? There is a Savior. You can be free. You can be forgiven. That’s why Christ came!

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the greatness of Your grace, the wonder of Your love. We are amazed that You continually love us. Your love for us does not vary, does not waiver, even when we are unfaithful You cannot deny Yourself. You are faithful. Thank You Lord for all You’ve promised us in Christ and You are the guarantee that someday we will enter in to the fullness of all You’ve promised to those who love You. Pray for those who hear this word who do not yet know you. They may have been around the truth, they may have heard much of the truth, they may have memorized some of the truth but they have never placed their faith in Christ. May this be a day of salvation for them we pray in Christ’s name? Amen