Revelation, Revelation 1, NT S1:E291

0:00Welcome to the Family Bible Journey. If you would like to see how the journaling that we talk about in the podcast works, go to the website familybibledjrny.com where you can learn more. This is episode 291, season one of the Family Bible Journey New Testament Podcast. Today we are looking at Revelation 1. The title of today's podcast is Revelation in our key verses for today, the entirety of Revelation 1, where we read. 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 a 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.

1:02John 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 first born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings on earth, to him who loves us, and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests, 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 pierce him, and all tribes of the earth will well, and 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. I, John, your brother, and partner, and the tribulation, and the kingdom, and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos, on account of the word of

2:02God, and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, right what you see in a book, and sent it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, and to Smirna, and to Pergamum, and to Thietira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Leia Dicea. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe, with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

3:03When I saw him, I felt his feet as though dead, while he laid his right hand out of me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and hateys. Right therefor the things that you have seen, those that are, and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. This is the word of the Lord. So we begin our reflection on Revelation, the last book in the Bible. And we, as we listen to these visions, there are times like the rest of scripture, where things are going to be explained, and we are going to have the meaning of things shared with us. There are many other things in this book that are going to be left unexplained. They are true, and John gets to witness things that happen in the future.

4:09But I am going to draw the line at making many firm assertions about what John sees or his visions. The main message of the book of Revelation is that even though we live as God's people in a broken, sinful, trying existence full of death and sin, where Satan is a very real adversary trying to devour the souls of as many as he can, that God is God, and he is on the throne. And that at the end of time, when Christ brings all things to conclusion, when and where and how it is that he sees right, then we will be brought into the Lord's nearer presence. And as Christians who are reading this account of the Revelation and the time between times, the time between when Christ is fulfilled, the Father's will for us by his life, death, and resurrection, yet before he returns again in his full glory, we get to live our lives,

5:16knowing how it is that God in Christ Jesus has defeated death and sin in Satan for us. But there is time yet that God has for his own intentions and purposes, left us here on this earth, that we would continue to tell the good news of his redeeming love, in the midst of an evil and sinful and broken world that is full of suffering, sin, shame, and death, that more might be added to Heaven's rules. And this is why we are here, that we would continue as John had faithfully proclaimed the word of God and Jesus Christ as its fulfillment, that we would do the same. And John receives this revelation we are told on Patmos, which is a penal colony. It was a place for prisoners, and it is very likely that John may have actually been taken there, suffering as a persecuted old man for the gospel. But regardless, he is allowed in this very hard place, a place that I have been blessed

6:23to visit, a place that even though it is in the midst of the Aegean Sea, it is cold, it is windy, it is stark, there isn't a whole lot going on there. It's a fitting place for a penal colony, because there just isn't a whole lot to subsist on. It is a hard island. I think of Greek islands as these beautiful, warm, sunny places, and indeed many of them are, but this one, just because of the way that the weather works in that part of the world, it is a tough place. It could be a brutal place. And John receives this revelation in that difficult place, in that hard place. And that is fitting, because tribulation, the actual translation of the Greek word, leapsis, which is generally in many of our English translations translated as tribulation, it simply means suffering. And I would dare say that that suffering is not something that we have to look forward

7:25to experiencing in a final time as if there is going to be a particular time of leapsis or tribulation. But rather leapsis, tribulation, was born at the fault and is sinned. Once in entered into God's creation when Adam and Eve used the dominion and the authority that God had given to them, to subject themselves, their descendants, and all of creation, to the sin and shame and suffering and death and disease that we see everywhere we look in this life. And so we hear this account of Revelation from John the Apostle, the last living disciple of Jesus Christ. Thinking that he writes this with the intent of sharing a vision that he got to see, which is the end of all things. And if we learn nothing more from Revelation than know that right now and in the end God is going to be raining on his throne and that we who are in his kingdom are going to be

8:28victorious with him and get to live with him forever in his glorious presence. And you get that point, I suppose that's good enough. But I hope that you do listen because there is some great learning here. Even though we are going to be confronted by things that we are not going to understand, even though John is describing for us things that I would say he didn't even understand, there is much good and much learning for us as we are encouraged in our faith and see just a little bit of how it is that God is going to subdue all things in the end and get to look forward to the place that we are going to inherit by his grace and through his mercy that is ours to the cross of his dear Son Jesus. If you are blessed by the Family Bible Journey podcast, help us get the word out either by becoming a sponsor at FamilyBibleJourney.com or simply by liking, sharing, following and subscribing as you listen.

9:30We are blessing for today. May you bear all tribulation with patient endurance as you await the return of Christ. Amen.