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Now, if we're all ready, we shall begin our morning study. In our last two sessions, we have spent the time surveying the structure of the book of the Revelation. Now we must turn to study the first section of that book in some detail. It will be useful, therefore, if you have within your grasp page one, page two, and page three of the notes with which you have been provided. So now, if you would take in hand page three of those notes, I have listed for you there what appear to me to be the four major elements in the first section of the book.
They are, first of all, the nature and contents of the book, the statement that fills chapter one, verses one to three. Then John issues greetings and grace from the Holy Trinity, verses four to eight. of that chapter one. Then John relates to us the tremendous vision that was given him on the Isle of Patmos one Sunday morning, as the Son of Man appeared to him, and John saw him in all his glory, surrounded by seven golden lampstands.
Then finally comes the long section that fills chapters two and three as our Lord dictates to his seven churches messages that John was asked to write in a book and send to them. Now we have already considered some of the detail of the first, uh, verses, verses one to three, and we need not repeat them here this morning. Let us notice what our Lord's, uh, what the verses say in chapter one and verse one.
But when our Lord came to make known his revelation that God gave him to show unto his servants, even things which must shortly come to pass, he sent an signified it, says the text, by his angel unto his servant John. And that word that is here translated signify has held, has been held to be very significant by many students of the revelation. They have argued that the word means to express in metaphorical and spiritual language, and that therefore this word is telling us that virtually little or nothing in the book of the revelation that is to follow can be safely understood literally.
All is couched in metaphorical, symbolic, and spiritual language. Now that observation may not impinge directly and immediately on our interpretation of what follows, but it will eventually become an, an important matter of interpretation. And therefore, it might repay us to spend a little time at the beginning of our study examining how exactly that word is used elsewhere in the New Testament. And for that purpose, shall we turn to the gospel by John, written, as I believe, by the same author as the Revelation, the gospel of John and chapter twelve, where he uses this word to signify, it is the Greek word semeno.
John chapter twelve, and we shall read verses thirty one, thirty two, and thirty three. Here is our Lord speaking to the crowd in Jerusalem, and he says as follows: Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this, he said, signifying by what manner of death he should die. So first of all, we have our Lord's statement, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself.
And then we have an explanation from John that in couching his remark in this particular language, he was signifying something. This is our word se maeno, signifying. He was signifying by what manner of death he should die. And so we take the verb that he used on that occasion, I, if I be, lifted up. And we inquire, what does John mean when he says that by using that term lifted up, he was signifying his death?
Are we to understand that John is saying he didn't really mean that when the Lord Jesus died, he was literally and physically lifted up? But that he was lifted up in some metaphorical and spiritual sense. Well, of course, the answer is very obvious at the first level, is it not? When our Lord spoke of his coming death and said that he would be lifted up, he was signifying, to use our verb, that he would be literally and physically lifted up upon a cross. He was signifying by that verb lift up his crucifixion.
And therefore we see at once that if in the revelation the verb signify is used, it does not necessarily mean that the language used is to be understood simply, metaphorically, and spiritually, and symbolically. It could mean that the, uh, thing signified is to be understood very literally and physically. And of course, we must judge which is which on each occasion. But we stay a moment with this statement in the Gospel of John chapter twelve.
Said our Lord in verse thirty two, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. And now you perceive that he was signified not only that he would be literally and physically raised up upon a cross, but his being raised up upon a cross would mean his being lifted up in another sense, spiritually, and proclaimed before the whole world, lifted up in the eyes of all nations so that all may see.
And in seeing him lifted up upon a cross and thus publicly advertised before the whole universe, men and women would be drawn to him and to what he accomplished by thus being lifted up upon a cross. So while on this occasion the verb to signify in the first place is to be understood literally and physically, the literal and physical meaning does not exhaust the total meaning of the phrase. It is not a question of either literal or symbolic.
It is a question of both literal and symbolic. And we shall re- need to remember that too, as we come to interpret the language of this very interesting and imaginative and vivid book. Since we have begun to talk of these things, let us s- pause a moment or two longer to consider the medium that has been used by our blessed Lord Jesus in communicating these things to us. Therein, of course, for most of us, lies the difficulty of the book.
And perhaps sometimes we get a little bit impatient with the Lord, though we don't confess it, and wish only he had used much more straightforward speech, and then we wouldn't need a whole lot of preachers to come and tell us what it meant, you'll see. We could know what it meant, uh, directly. Wouldn't it have been far more easy? Yes, it would indeed, and far more poverty stricken as well. You'll see, how then are we to understand all these marvelous pictures and symbolic language? Some people have felt that these symbols and pictures are a kind of code that transmit a message in secret signs.
If you know the meaning of the code, then you can decode it and come at the actual message. And I suppose that there is some code in the book of the Revelation. At least there is one notable place where people are generally agreed that some code is being used. That place is the chapter thirteen and verses, verse eighteen, where John, appealing to the wise to understand, says, here is wisdom, he that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty and six.
And the commentators, almost all of them, unite in suggesting that this number six six six is a kind of code. To understand it, you should first of all reflect that in both Hebrew and Greek, the letters of the alphabet were used also for numerals. So if you get a numeral like six six six, take it as individual sixes or take it as six hundred and sixty six, and you substitute the appropriate Hebrew letters, or if you think it better, the appropriate Greek letters.
You will come up with a name. And so the numbers are being used as a code to convey this secret name. Many of the commentators suggest that the reason why John used, or our Lord here used a code, is because, according to their deciphering of the code, the name that was being conveyed was the name of the present reigning Roman emperor, and it wouldn't have been safe to publish a book in which the emperor was named and his miserable end foretold.
The Romans were very, uh, wary of prophet mongering. You'll see, if a prophet arose in any part of their empire and started preaching prophecies that indicated that the Roman Empire as a whole, or some individual emperor, was soon to meet his end, the Romans felt, well, we don't believe in prophecy anyway, it's a lot of nonsense, but actually the general public might go and believe it. And you know, if the public got to believing this so-called prophecy, they might, uh, be given a motive for putting it into action, and the Roman Empire might in fact pass away.
So they will get their spies with their open eyes, watching all that the harebrained Hebrew prophets had to say in contemporary Judea. And perhaps that is, incidentally, of course, why certain de- totalitarian powers in more recent decades have been so afraid of the preaching of the second coming of Christ. That wasn't a code anyway, that was plain talk, wasn't it? And they didn't like it. Because it seemed to them to herald the beginning of the end of their domination. So it may be, as I say, that there are some places where the revelation is to be treated as a code.
Though, even if that is granted, it is not always easy to decipher the code. Uh, read the commentaries at this juncture, and you will see that though they are convinced it is a code, they're not all convinced exactly how you should interpret it. Uh, uh, should, uh, the numerals refer to Hebrew letters, or should they refer to Greek letters, and, uh, whichever you choose, alas, you can make the same letters, the same numbers, and the same letters refer to different names. I leave it there because I shall not be myself attempting to interpret many details of the revelation as though they were code.
It is important for us to see nonetheless that many of these symbolic expressions and figures and pictures that are used were never meant to be treated as code, though sometimes we are inclined to do it. Let's take an example, a simple example, from chapter five of this book, where John, uh, hears the, uh, proclamation and the challenge, who is worthy to come and take the book from the hand of him that sits upon the throne and to break the seals, unroll the book, and set into action the judgments that it requires.
And at first no one was found willing or able to open the book, nor worthy either, and John wept much. But presently the angel said to John, weep not, for the lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to, uh, open the seals, open the book and to break its seals. Lion of the tribe of Judah. How are we to take the expression? We'll say, is this some code? Well, watch what happens if you treat it as a code. You say to yourself, here we go again, another kind of picture language.
Why can't we have it in plain, straightforward speech? Now, this Lion of Judah, who is this Lion of Judah? So perhaps the angel tells you, well, this is the Lord Jesus. And we say, well, why didn't you tell us in the first place it was the Lord Jesus? Then we should have understood. You'll see. Why tell us it's a Lion of Judah? Why can't you speak plain, straightforward Russian, Hebrew, Greek, English, or Polish, or what have you. So I see the Lion of Judah is the Lord Jesus. Well, well, now let's scrap, scrap the code, get rid of the lion, and put it simply, the Lord Jesus has prevailed to open the book. Ah, now we know.
Uh, and John said, I turned to see this lion, and then didn't see a lion. I saw a lamb as it had been slain, having seven eyes and horns. Oh. So now we've got to ask, well, who, who is this lamb then? Rather an extraordinary lamb, you'll see, having seven horns and seven eyes. So we asked the angel, well, what does the code mean? Who, who is this lamb? Well, it's the Lord Jesus. Dear me, why didn't you tell us straight out it was the Lord Jesus?
Then we shouldn't have had any trouble understanding it, of course not. Mm, how confusing, one minute to use a code that says a lion and another minute to say a lamb. How would anybody make sense of it? Oh, at any rate, now we know it's the Lord Jesus. So the Lord Jesus has prevailed to open the book and to loose the seals thereof, and that we are told twice. Yeah, but you laugh because it was never meant to be treated like that, was it? It was not told. If you didn't know it was the Lord Jesus to start with, perhaps you oughtn't to be reading the book at all. Any Christian who got hold of this book would know that there was only one in heaven, earth, or earth either that was worthy to open the book, and he was the Lord Jesus.
Of course, you know that even before you begin to read the book. But now comes the question, and the Lord Jesus, what is he like? How do you visualize the blessed Lord Jesus? Now behold the wisdom of God and our Lord's own self-description. If you would visualize the blessed Lord Jesus and what is he is like, well, for the moment, picture a lion, and not some tame lion, some mangy old lion in some zoo in Europe.
A magnificent male lion in the forest, and hear him roar until all the other animals are quiet and bow down. That's your savior. That is the blessed Lord Jesus. Oh, let our minds and imaginations be helped by this kind of language. To grasp with our imaginations what we know with our intellect. Sometimes we use the name Jesus, and we are far from conceptualizing the wonderful person whose name we use.
Would you know who that all glorious and powerful person is, and whereon he relied for his power to subdue mankind and draw them to him. When I turned to see the lion, says John, I saw a lamb as it had been slain. But it was a lamb with seven horns, not a ram with just two curling at the side of its ears, but seven horns and seven eyes.
A curious mixture that does not exist in the natural world, but a figure necessary to convey the secret of our Lord's blessed power over his subjects. And you know what I, what it means, don't you? How has the blessed Lord subdued your heart, my brother, my sister? Was it that he roared at you? Till almost out of your wits, you cowered down to submit to him. No, you say, no, lion of the tribe of Judah though he is, that's not how he subdued me.
He subdued me by being the lamb slain for me, who being reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered, he threatened not, was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before his shearers, so he opened not his mouth. Guileless and without deceit himself, he was wounded and slain for my transgression.
And he being lifted up as a sacrificial lamb of God, has drawn you to him, yes. And you have found this divine paradox, that the weakness of the crucified Christ at Calvary has proved to be the very power of God unto salvation. For the weakness of God is stronger than men. He is the lion, born to be king. He is the lamb whose very weakness is the source of his power.
So that perhaps is how we should use much of the symbolic language of this book. Not to start with the symbol and simply go to some unknown reality as though it were a code. We start with the reality, and we come the other way. That what we know of the Blessed Lord and of other people and things and institutions should now be made vivid to our imagination, uh, and to our grasp by the use of this symbolic language. And while we're at the matter of language, perhaps we ought to notice one other kind of thing that happens.
And I apologize in advance now that I must use some jargon to explain it. In the book of the Revelation, there is what you might call concretized metaphor. That is a difficult idea, isn't it? When we say we're using metaphor, we use a phrase, not in its literal sense, but we take a metaphor from the literal world, and we apply it at another level. But sometimes writers, uh, to gain effect, will take a metaphor and put it back into the literal world.
The people that often do that nowadays are cartoonists in newspapers. Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm saying the book of the Revelation is like a newspaper. But, uh, yes, cartoonists do that, don't they? They'll take a metaphor and then draw a picture describing that metaphor in literal terms. So perhaps the cartoonist wants to say that the prime minister of the country has shut the mouths of his, uh, cabinet by bribery. Well, I don't know what country that would happen, but I, this is just a, it is just a made-up illustration, of course.
The Prime Minister has sealed the mouths of his cabinet ministers by bribery. So the cartoonist sets about, he draws a picture, you see, and there are all the cabinet ministers, you'll see, sitting in their seats in Parliament, and stuck right across their mouths are banknotes. And you can see in the picture that poor men can't open their mouths to say anything because they've got money stuck across their mouths. But what is the man saying? Well, you say he doesn't mean literally.
If you went in Parliament, you wouldn't see them there literally with banknotes stuck across their mouths. Of course you wouldn't. Oh, you say you mean it metaphorically, I see. Ha ha. I got the idea of interpretation. Hmm. So the banknotes aren't real in this case, and the mouths aren't real either. None of it's real. Uh, uh, uh, when the picture draws politicians, it doesn't mean real politicians, it means, well, symbolic politicians. Whatever symbolic politicians are, heavenly ones perhaps, I don't know if there are such things. You'll say, anyway, no, no, no, you'll say, no, no, no, you haven't understood how cartoons work, you'll say.
The politicians are real enough, even to the seats they sit on in the parliament, and they've got real mouths, and mouths that should be open and speaking. The only thing that isn't to be taken literally is the banknotes across their mouths. The banknotes are real anyway, but they're in their pockets, actually, and in their bank balance. But this is a picturesque way of saying that the Prime Minister has got their mouths shut by bribery. And what the cartoonist has done to get his striking effect is to take a metaphor, he has sealed their mouths, and put it back as though it were a literal thing, mouths sealed with literal banknotes.
There is a famous passage in the book of the Revelation that describes the thousand years reign of Christ, and it begins by saying, I saw an angel come down from heaven with a great chain, and he got hold of the devil, and he chained him up in the abyss, and he sealed it on top of him. And then our blessed Lord reigns for a thousand years. Now, however we view that passage, we must be careful what use we make of the imagery, mustn't we? Some have said, well, look, the chain can't be a literal chain, can it now? It's no good asking what the chain is made of.
It isn't a literal chain. Well, not a literal chain that we know of in our world would be the better way of putting it. What chains God uses in the spiritual realm when he says that evil angels have been cast down and kept in chains of darkness, awaiting the great day of judgment. What kind of chains God has to use to chain spirit beings, I couldn't begin to describe for you. They are a great reality. But in the revelation of the picture of a literal chain, such as we know, is not to be taken literally.
It could be quite false argument, couldn't it, to say that none of the e- rest of that passage is to be taken literally. The whole thing could be in the nature of a very exalted and God-inspired cartoon. But enough of all that. I have wandered a bit from our task, which is to interpret the, uh, first major section of the book of the Revelation, but perhaps these observations may be a contribution to the interpretation of a book that is so filled with a variety of simile and metaphor of all kinds, as well as symbols, and make us aware that the symbols and the metaphorical language are not given to becloud the things and make it difficult for us to understand.
They are given to us to enrich our apprehension, to encourage us to use our sanctified imagination, that we may feel with our hearts the things that we learn with our heads. And now we come back where we started, to the introductory statement of the contents of the book. Shall we notice the third element in verse three? Blessed is he that reads and they that hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things which are written therein, for the time is at hand.
From this we must notice the very practical point that the prophecy has to be kept. It is not just an interesting exercise in trying to lay out some timetable for the future that we can enjoy as a theological game and then forget as we go to our practical living. Just as all the other words of the Lord Jesus are to be kept, we are to keep them in our hearts and in our memories and constantly remind ourselves of them. And we are to keep his sayings by obeying his sayings and by living in the light of them.
So the book of the Revelation is an intensely practical book. These prophecies are to be kept in our hearts. We are constantly to think of them, and they are to be kept by obediently living in the light of them. For instance, when presently we shall hear the command given to the people of God, come out of Babylon, my people. It is a command to be obeyed, for it comes from the living Lord himself.
And we are to keep these things, for the time is at hand. And here we may usefully remind ourselves that while the bulk of the book of the Revelation refers to the future, it was from the very beginning the standpoint of the church, given to the church by the risen Lord, that his coming was at hand. Says John in writing his epistle, little children, he says, it is the last time, it is the last hour. The church in all its generations has to be, has been called to live as though it stood on the threshold of the coming of the Lord Jesus.
And I needn't point out the urgency that give, that gives to our study of his word, to our understanding of it, and to our obeying it. The Lord is at hand. Surely I come quickly, is his last voice to us in this prophecy. And we show our readiness for his coming by the way we read it, and by his grace keep it in our hearts, and by his grace determine to obey its implication. And next we notice there follows the greeting and the grace.
It was, of course, a formal part of letter writing in the ancient world that the author would announce his name at the beginning. In many societies at the present, when we write letters, we put our name at the end. Nevertheless, we generally begin by some honorific term to the person that we are writing to, dear sir or gnädige Frau or something at the beginning. And then we sign ourselves, yours faithfully, yours sincerely, yours very truly, whether it is in fact always the truth, is a question that could be debated, you'll see.
Some of the biggest lies that ever walked the earth have been concluded by the phrase, yours sincerely and yours truly. But these are the formalities of letter writing. And so when John was commissioned to write this work to the churches, he now begins by stating his name, John, to the seven churches which are in Asia. But as you see, the greeting is followed by the grace, and the grace certainly is not a formality. John's greeting to the church was not a formality either. It was sincerely meant. But the grace that he was commissioned to convey was no formality.
Grace and peace, he says to you, from the whole of the Blessed Trinity. Grace and peace are not just formal words in the New Testament. They are the expression of the very heart of the gospel. For in God's revelation and in his word, God communicates his grace towards us in all the varied wealth of its different senses. Basic to the very gospel he proclaims is this glorious fact of the divine grace.
By grace you have been saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The greeting and the grace come to us even this morning. Grace to us from the Blessed Trinity, conveyed by the Lord Jesus. Of his fullness have we all received, says John elsewhere, and grace upon grace. It is good that we listen to the greeting from the Holy Trinity as we read this book. It was meant to minister the grace of God to our hearts, indeed the saving grace of God to our hearts.
It is not just an intellectual exercise to be enjoyed by theologians of that particular bent, but meaning very little. It conveys grace, it conveys saving grace. Well, now sometimes we have a very curious attitude to Holy Scripture. All believers would go to the stake, if need be, to testify to their belief that the Bible is the word of God. But, uh, somehow we don't always get round to reading all of it, do we? As a preacher, I often hear over my shoulder, so to speak, real or imaginary, the advice of elders of a church.
Now, do be practical. And I know what they mean. It is possible to expound scripture in a very unpractical way, isn't it? But that's not the fault of scripture. That's the fault of the expositor. Scripture is everywhere exceedingly practical. There is not a comma in the whole of scripture that isn't aimed at our salvation. We need God's word in the ongoing process of being saved. This book is no exception to the rule.
It conveys to us the saving grace of God. With his grace comes peace, not just the super- superficial peace of prosperity and good health, a profound peace. Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We do well to listen to these words of grace that come to us from the Holy Trinity themselves. We are about to listen in this book to some tremendous outpouring of his wrath.
Were our hearts not already founded and established in his grace, if we didn't really enjoy in the depths of our hearts peace with God, then a serious study of the judgments of this book would surely unsettle us and fill us with foreboding and fear. In his great mercy, before the subject matter of the book begins, God, who is its author, assures us of his grace in salvation and the consequent peace that we may enjoy with him.
Grace and peace then. But notice now that unlike many of the epistles, it doesn't proceed grace and peace from God the Father. Of course, he is here referred to. Grace and peace come to us from the Trinity, but look how they are described. First of all, him whom we call the, he whom we call the Father, grace to you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come. Similarly, uh, the blessed Holy Spirit is not here referred to simply in those terms as the Holy Spirit, but as the seven spirits which are before his throne.
Similarly, here the Lord Jesus is described in the words the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. So it is telling us that if we would enjoy the grace of God and his peace in all its fullness, then we must learn to grow up in our knowledge of the persons of the Trinity. It is lovely, isn't it, to come at the beginning of our spiritual pilgrimage, pilgrimage and learn God as our Father. We can know that as little children, can't we?
Who are redeemed by the Lord Jesus and welcomed by the Father, have felt the Father's arms of welcome around us. And like a little infant in its father's arms, we lift up our hearts and our faces to God our Father, and though we know very little of him and his ways, we breathe that holy word, Abba Father, Dad, God the Almighty is my Father. Marvelous. And all the children in God's families, even the little children, know instinctively by the Spirit of God dwelling in them that God has become their Father.
While we shall never forget it, in one sense never get beyond it, we have to grow up and learn that the members of the Trinity are bigger than we might first have imagined when we first came to know them. We learn that our Father is to be understood as him that is and which was and is to come. He is in the eternal. I am that I am. He is of the eternal present. The message that he gave to Moses at the burning bush, when he was to send Moses to deliver Israel from the bondage to Pharaoh.
I am that I am. Go tell my people, I am has sent me to you. Oh, he is the great eternal God. As our Lord Jesus pointed out to the Sadducee, all live to him, for he is the eternal present. If you went to God at this moment and said, God, excuse me, did you know Abraham? You would be gently corrected. What do you mean, did I know Abraham? I know him now. There he is, look. All live to God in his great eternity of being, in his unchanging being.
Grace to you, my brother and sister, this morning, from him who is. We are tiny little creatures of time, but if you have come to know God through Jesus Christ, you know him that is, and the relation he has formed with you is eternal. This is eternal life, to know the only and true God. The relationship is eternal. And he was, always was. Go back as far as your mind will allow you.
In times past, it is still true that God always was. And he is to come. Of course, that does imply that he will always exist. He's never going to retire or give up or decease. But it means more than that, does it not? The Greek could have used simply the verb to be in the future. He is about to be, or will continue being. He prefers to use the verb to come. He is the coming one. What a lovely set of ideas it raises in our minds. Listen to the psalmist, if you will, as he surveys the troubles of this evil world.
He calls on us to rejoice, for the Lord comes, he says. You cannot read the great procession and cavalcade of Old Testament revelation without perceiving that all down the ages, God was ever the God that was going to come. It always something new to bring out, something new to get started. And if you thought Eden had exhausted his capabilities by planting a garden in Eden, then you were mistaken, weren't you? For when he got out in the wilderness, you could say, what would God do with a wilderness like this of Sinai? Well, he built a tabernacle, of course, and brought down the great realities of the eternal heavenly world into time, and turned the very wilderness into the dwelling place of God.
Oh, he's not hard up for ideas, he's God. Yet another idea, if I may put it that way, the God that was to come. And one day it wasn't the physical, literal tabernacle made of wood and silver. The Word of God became flesh and tabernacled among us. All for the fertility of God's imagination and ideas and purposes. He was always to come. And he's still to come. What magnificent plans and counsels does God have up his sleeve? And some of them he tells us about here.
And from the seven spirits that are before the throne, we're used to thinking of the Holy Spirit as the counselor that has been sent, the comforter, the advocate within us, to lead us and guide us individually, to lead us in the churches. And that is perfectly true and marvelous and wonderful. He's bigger than that. He can be described as the seven spirits which are before the throne of God. Another passage described him as sent out into all the world. And he, who when earth was without form and void, hovered over the face of the deep and brought into existence the world that God had planned and now commanded to be created.
That Holy Spirit has been abroad in the earth. Zechariah knew of it and talked of it in his prophecies. The seven spirits before God's throne sent out into all the earth. And we know him now, don't we, has come in a special sense, in a sense he never had before, come at the day of Pentecost to abide and to dwell with God's people and to lead them home to glory. He concerns himself not merely with the church. He works in the world. He is the great executor of the will of God.
We all say things do not happen. You may say on the one side, if I can take our own Christian experience, that God has elected us, he has called us, he has justified us, and says scripture, he has glorified us. You'll say that's the purpose of God, and God has decided it, and because he's decided it, it will happen. Well, thank God it will. But it doesn't happen mechanically, does it? Those purposes of God take place. Because, as that very same passage indicates, the Holy Spirit, residing in the hearts of his people, makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered, and by the putting out of his divine energies, effects in our lives, the fulfillment of the promises and purposes of God.
So will that Holy Spirit do for all God's great purposes in the world? And then notice how the blessed Lord Jesus is described. From Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us and loosed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, uh, to be priests unto his God and Father, to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over him.
Even so. Amen. From Jesus Christ our Lord then. Once more, we notice how he is described. First of all, he is the faithful witness. He is that still, of course. But as we found the other evening, when we read of our Lord Jesus as the faithful witness, it will remind us especially of the witness he gave, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession. He is now to call upon us, his people, likewise to witness faithfully as he witnessed.
It cost him his life. It could cost us ours. He is a faithful witness. His witness before Pilate cost him his life. He's risen now. He is the firstborn from the dead. And Colossians comments that he is the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might be first. First in creation. He demands to be first in the church. Grace to you from him, the firstborn from the dead. It will strengthen the sense of God's grace in our hearts if we can maintain that concept.
Our blessed Lord Jesus is head and Lord of the church, being the firstborn from the dead. And when we gather in church, we come not simply to meet one another or to hear gifted preachers. We come to meet the Lord and head of the church and to submit ourselves to him. And then he has a future role, has he not? He is, says the passage, the ruler of the kings of the earth. And that applies predominantly, doesn't it, to his coming reign. We shall see it to be very important in the es- in the interpretation of this book to distinguish between the general kingdom of God, his reign that has gone on all down the centuries.
God has never abdicated. God who exercises dominion amongst the nations by raising up a Nebuchadnezzar, if he pleases, and then if he pleases, putting Nebuchadnezzar down, that Nebuchadnezzar might learn that the Most High God rules in the nations of men. We must distinguish between that and the messianic reign of our Lord Jesus, like Daniel distinguished. It would be a confusion of thought, surely, to suppose that our Lord is reigning in the messianic sense. That reign is to come.
And we await his coming, when we shall reign with him. He has gone away, as he himself indicated in his parable, like the nobleman who went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return. He has gone away. One day he shall come again, and then he shall sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations be gathered before him. Jesus Christ in his person then and now, what he has done, he has made our, he loves us and loosed us from our sins by his blood.
That is the negative side of it. He loosed us from the chains of our sin and our guilt. Now, positively, he has made us to be priests, a kingdom unto God and his Father. And the thought of it leads John to an outburst of praise. To him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. We, his people, yield to him that dominion and glory now, don't we? That's not the end of the matter. For now, to fulfill the messianic program, John adds verse seven, or rather the Holy Trinity does. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth shall mourn over him, even so.
Amen. Oh, grace to you, not only in your relation to God and to the Holy Spirit, but into the blessed Lord Jesus, who loved you and died for you at Calvary, who has even now made you a kingdom of priests, and presently is coming to again, uh, coming again, and our hearts excitedly look forward to his coming. With that, the Blessed Trinity, in the person of the Father, intervenes to talk to us directly. I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come.
Alpha and Omega, first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Tell us not only that God has the l- first word, and God will have the last. That's lovely in itself, isn't it? It was his word that brought the universe into being. There's been a babel of voices since then, proud men announcing their schemes and intentions. That God is going to have the last word, as he had the first word. There's more to it than that. Ha, he's the first and the last letter and all the letters in between.
It's by knowing this language you can read, you know. Can't read if you can't read the alphabet, can you what? Would you make sense of history? Is there any meaning to history? Is history going anywhere? Or is it just the noise of endless monkeys and fools, signifying nothing in particular? Well, if you're going to make sense of history, you'll have to learn this alphabet of all alphabets. It starts with God, Alpha, and it goes through all the word letters until it comes to Omega.
Anybody that can't read this language is ignorant of the things that matter most. He not only is the word, is the one that is and was and is to come. But pray notice it is not only words. He has almighty power, and for him to speak is to act, and to act is to speak. There is one translation of a verse in the Epistle to the Ephesians that says that God is going to sum up all things in Christ.
The verb can mean a number of different things, maybe. I like that translation that says he's going to sum up, like an orator in the ancient world would sum up his speech. The ancient Greeks, not to talk of the Romans, loved oratory. They hadn't got the TV then, mercifully. And they loved oratory, you see, and they worked out all their theories as how you should present a good speech, you see. You had an introduction that had to have this and this and this element, you see, and then you had the main sections, generally one, two, three, like all good preachers do, and I don't. And then there was a, a conclusion, you see, because by the time the, the, the speaker had got to his last paragraph, you'd forgotten what he said at the first.
Isn't that true of any sermon? A- a- and you'd forgotten what he said at the beginning, you see. So any preacher, any orator worth his salt, when he got to the last paragraph, he went over the whole business all over again and started at the beginning and showed how it all fitted together. That was the summing up. I love the idea that when history is done, God shall stand forth and sum up what he was saying all the way through. I'd like to know, wouldn't you? I think sometimes in my childish kind of mind of the day of creation, and I see God making the world.
I say, that's interesting. And then he made, uh, the beast and the giraffe. I said, my Lord, what are you doing? What, what do you mean by creating giraffes? Did anybody ever see the point of giraffes? Ah. And then here come these humans. I say, Lord, what were you saying? What did you mean by creating humans? I mean, my brother over there, he's a good chap, but whatever did you mean by creating him? What were you saying? Mm. What were you saying all down the ages of history with the nation?
I thank God for him who is the word of God, who spoke God's message and conveyed his meaning impeccably. But, you know, a trouble with the lot of the alphabets and parts of God's speech is that the, the letters were independent beings. It would be difficult writing a book if the letters could get up and run off, wouldn't it? And say, I don't agree to be spelt this way and stand in this connection in this particular word. I have my own ideas of what I mean. Difficult to write a book that way, wouldn't it? And I tell you, God has had a great difficulty with some of us characters.
