Revelation

The Spirit Speaks to the Churches

James M. Hamilton Jr., R. Kent Hughes

• Editorial: Crossway
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781433523076

In the book of Revelation, God unveils the world as it really is, identifying an unseen spiritual war and announcing a very real day of judgment. We need to be convinced that Jesus is reigning as the risen King. We need to have him speak to the situation in our churches. We need to see how God will pulverize wickedness, obliterate those who oppose him, and set up his kingdom. Revelation has exactly what we need.

Useful for personal study, as well as for preaching and teaching (Hamilton even includes helpful charts and tables to highlight key themes and literary elements), the thirty-seven sermons in this volume have a clear structure: introduction, body, and conclusion. Hamilton successfully grabs the reader's attention, raises awareness of a real need, and states the main point of the sermon text. In addition to explaining the meaning of each passage, Hamilton connects the main ideas to applicable analogies and actionable points. Revelation is a prophecy of epic proportions and Hamilton invites readers to love God and his people by expositing this revelation of Jesus, and to say along with the apostle John, "Come, Lord Jesus."

Part of thePreaching the Wordseries.

1

The Revelation of the Glory of God’s Justice and Mercy

REVELATION 1—22

WE ALL KNOW WHAT TOOK PLACE September 11, 2001. Nineteen terrorists. Four planes. Two towers of the World Trade Center. The Pentagon. An open field. Nearly three thousand people dead.

What if you had known about all that with absolute certainty on September 10, 2001? What if you had gotten information on the afternoon of September 10, 2001, about what was going to happen the next morning? What if your wife or your son or your mother or your brother-in-law was going to be on one of those planes? Would you not do absolutely everything in your power to use the information you had received to help people avoid the fiery destruction that was coming?

Something is coming that is going to be infinitely worse than 9/11, eternally worse—the judgment of God.

God has given information in the past that has helped people escape the coming conflagration, and there have been times when people have made powerful use of what God revealed about the future. Why couldn’t something like that happen today? What would your life look like if you made use of what God has revealed about what is to come?

In Moses’ day the Lord revealed himself to Israel, creating them as a nation, reshaping their lives around his word. We have the Bible. Why not today?

Samuel faithfully proclaimed the word of God for twenty years, and then revival came. We have the Bible. Why not today?

The Bible was rediscovered in Josiah’s day. The priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord, and once again society was reshaped around the Word of God. We have the Bible. Why not today?

In Ezra’s day he faithfully proclaimed the word of God for thirteen years. Nehemiah came on the scene, and the people turned their hearts to the word of the Lord proclaimed by Ezra. The society was reshaped around the word of God. We have the Bible. Why not today?

We could go on and on giving examples of times when things were awful, and then people got serious about God’s revelation of himself, and so many lives were changed that society was transformed. It happened in Luther’s day, in Whitefield’s day, and in some places it is happening today. Why not here? Why not today?

What would it look like for this to happen today? What would it look like for God to become the dominant reality in your life, in my life? What would it look like for the things in the Bible to be more real to you than the things on television or the things on the Internet?

God has revealed himself to accomplish this very thing. God reveals himself so that we will know reality. In the book of Revelation, God unveils the world as it really is.

Need

We have been lulled to sleep by the ordinariness of our lives. Our senses have been dulled by the humdrum of one day after another. We need to see God as he is. We need to be convinced that Jesus is reigning as the risen King. We need to have him speak to the situation in our churches. We need to know that God is right now on his throne, in control in Heaven, worshiped by myriads upon myriads of the heavenly host. We need to see the way that God will pulverize wickedness, obliterate those who oppose him, and set up his kingdom. The book of Revelation has exactly what we need.

Main Point

The Lord gives us this “revelation of Jesus Christ” and of what will “soon take place” (1:1) so that we can know and enjoy him by living in light of reality and in light of the way history will be brought to its consummation. More specifically, God wants us to know the glory of his mercy and his justice, and that is what we see in Revelation: history culminates in climactic demonstrations of the glory of God in salvation through judgment.¹

To say it another way, God has given us the book of Revelation so we can know him in his glorious justice and mercy and live worshipfully by faith.

Structure

Broadly speaking, we can break the whole book of Revelation down into three parts:

Revelation 1:1–8	The Opening: the Apocalyptic Prophecy’s
	Epistolary Opening
Revelation 1:9–22:9	The Vision: John’s Vision on the Lord’s Day
Revelation 22:10–21	The Closing: the Apocalyptic Prophecy’s
	Epistolary Closing

We can also break the body of the book, John’s Vision (1:9–22:9), down into three large sections:

1:9–3:22	Jesus and the Letters
4:1–16:21	The Throne and the Judgments
17:1–22:9	The Harlot, the King, and the Bride

Context

The book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ is appropriately placed at the end of the canon. This book catches up and weaves together all the Bible’s lines of prophetic revelation. John writes in such a way that his book is the capstone of all the prophecy in the Bible.²

Table 1.1: The Structure of Revelation

1:1–8, Revelation, Blessing, and Epistolary Opening

1:9–22:9, John’s Vision on the Lord’s Day

1:9–3:22, The Risen Christ to the Seven Churches

4:1–16:21, The Throne and the Judgments

4:1–5:14, The Throne Room Vision

6:1–17, Six Seals

7:1–17, The Sealing of the Saints and Their Worship

8:1–5, The Seventh Seal

8:6–9:21, Six Trumpets

10:1–11:14, Prophetic Witness

11:15–19, The Seventh Trumpet

12:1–14:20, Conflict Between the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent

15:1–16:21, Seven Bowls

17:1–22:9, The Fall of the Harlot, the Return of the King, and the Descent of the Bride

22:10–21, Revelation, Blessing, and Epistolary Closing

In this chapter we will overview the book of Revelation in order to prepare us for the immediate future, the distant future, and the eternal future. We want to get the weight and balance of the whole book.³ We want to understand the book’s flow of thought, its structure, and the main points made in each section. This will help us rightly understand the smaller units of the book in context when we study them in coming chapters. So we’ll look at the Opening (1:1–8), the Vision (1:9–22:9), and the Closing (22:10–21).

As we begin, let’s ask the Lord to use this book to fire us with the same urgency we would have if it were September 10, 2001, and we had just learned what was going to happen the next morning. You would not rest with that information. So may it be with this information.

Revelation 1:1–8: The Apocalyptic Prophecy’s Epistolary Opening

One of the most important things to do when trying to understand any piece of writing is to understand the genre of what it is we are reading. We know what to expect from comic strips, blogs, novels, and nonfiction books. So it’s important to understand the genre of Revelation to know what to expect.

The opening words of the book identify it, literally, as an “Apocalypse of Jesus Christ” (1:1). An apocalypse typically concerns itself with what will take place at the end of history, whereas prophecy usually deals with what will take place in the flow of history before it reaches its consummation.⁴ That the book of Revelation is an apocalypse, then, leads us to expect that it will “unveil”—which is the etymological meaning of the term “apocalypse”—what will take place at the end of history.⁵ This Bible book claims to “uncover” how history will be concluded.

John also pronounces a blessing in 1:3 on those who read, hear, and keep what is written in “this prophecy.” So John not only describes his book as an apocalypse, he also tells us that it is a prophecy. Revelation, then, is an apocalyptic prophecy.

And there is more. Beginning in 1:4 John takes up the same format that we see in Paul’s letters: the author identifies himself, identifies the recipients of the letter, and wishes them grace. The book also ends in a way that is similar to the way many New Testament letters end, with the words, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen” (22:21). The churches mentioned as the recipients of the book in 1:4 are further identified in 1:11, and then they are directly addressed in chapters 2, 3. These churches appear to be named in the order in which a letter carrier would have gone from one church to another, starting from Ephesus.⁶ What we have in Revelation, then, is “an apocalyptic prophecy in the form of a circular letter.”⁷

This book is a circular letter addressed to Christians in churches. That means it is written to encourage Christians. The whole book was probably intended to be read aloud, in one sitting, in a worship gathering of the local church.⁸ In writing to seven churches, seven being a number of completion and wholeness, John writes to all the churches.⁹ Being an apocalyptic prophecy, this letter reveals the future to us; it pulls back the veil and lets us see the world as it truly is. The book of Revelation is meant to help us see reality. And the truth about this world is that it is a world in which the glory of God will be seen in his justice, which in turn will highlight the gracious and free character of his mercy. Knowing that it is God’s purpose to display his glory in these ways is one of the blessings of reading and studying this book.

Revelation 1:9–22:9: John’s Vision on the Lord’s Day

John has tipped us off as to the structure of the book of Revelation by using the phrase “in the Spirit” near the beginning of the major sections of the body of the book (1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10).¹⁰ Beginning in 1:9, John recounts the way that Jesus appeared to him in glory (1:9–20), dictated to him specific letters addressing the seven churches (2:1–3:22), and called him up into the heavenly throne room to see the worship of God there (4:1–5:14). In the throne room, John sees Jesus take a scroll from the Father, and from what happens when the scroll is opened, we know that the writing on the scroll describes the events that will bring history to its appointed consummation. Jesus opens the seals on the scroll (6:1–8:1); then seven angels blow seven trumpets (8:2–11:19).

John describes the conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent in cosmic terms in chapters 12—14. Then the final seven bowls of God’s wrath are poured out in chapters 15, 16.

In chapters 17—22 we have a harlot, the King, and his bride. Revelation 17:1–19:10 personifies the wicked world system as a prostitute named Babylon, and the outpouring of God’s wrath results in her fall. King Jesus then comes and sets up his kingdom in 19:11–21:8. His coming is followed by the description of the people of God personified as the pure bride of the Lamb, the new Jerusalem, descending from Heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb (21:9–22:9).

Let’s look more closely at each of these sections to see the overarching point of each part of the body of Revelation.

Revelation 1:9–3:22: Jesus and the Letters

There is a striking contrast between the obvious glory and authority of the risen Christ in 1:9–20 and the beleaguered, persecuted, oppressed, sinful, unimpressive, insignificant state of the churches addressed in chapters 2, 3. Five of the seven churches are rebuked for some specific sin and called to repentance. The two churches that are not rebuked are opposed by the “synagogue of Satan” (2:9; 3:9) and are told that they will suffer (2:10). Jesus promises to preserve them through suffering (3:10).

Most of us are probably not facing life-threatening persecution like the church in Smyrna was facing (2:10), but we are probably all aware of plenty of reasons to be discouraged about the state of the church. Like Ephesus and Laodicea, we either know that our love is not what it was at first (2:4), or we know those in the church who are lukewarm (3:16). We don’t have to look far, either, to find false teaching, idolatry, immorality, and spiritual death in churches (cf. 2:14, 20; 3:2). Until Jesus comes, as long as there are people in churches, there will be problems in churches.

We might be discouraged by the letters to the seven churches. They tell the truth about the sinful, challenged, seemingly weak state of the churches. On the other hand, the vision of the risen Christ in 1:9–20 shows that Jesus is standing among the churches, holding the angels of the churches in his right hand, attending to their well-being, and possessing all glory and power and authority. Then as Jesus addresses the churches, the opening of each letter proclaims some aspect of his glory. He shows his love for the churches by disciplining them (3:19), and then he promises breathtaking rewards to those who overcome.

When seemingly weak Christians who are unappreciated by the wider society maintain their faith and continue to proclaim the gospel in spite of every temptation and opposition, God shows his glory in his ability to preserve his people. These people also testify that Jesus is their treasure, which condemns the treasures of the world as worthless. And when the unimpressive, insignificant church is vindicated, the things that are impressive by worldly standards are condemned, and the wisdom and power of God are displayed.

As the churches are compelled by the glory of Christ (1:9–20) to obey what he calls them to (2:1–3:22), we see that in spite of the way things seem now, God is the central reality of life. He is going to save the righteous and judge the wicked. And the righteous are those who have been freed from their sins by the blood of Jesus (1:5).

If it seems to you that the church is unimpressive, may I suggest that this is the way God intended the church to seem. Jesus, too, was unimpressive by worldly standards. He has now been exalted, and the promises he makes to those who overcome guarantee that exaltation will follow humiliation. We see in 2:7 that the overcomers will eat of the tree of life; in 2:11 they will not be hurt by the second death; in 2:17 they are promised hidden manna and a new name on a white stone; in 2:26 they are promised authority over the nations; in 3:5 they are promised white garments and Jesus’ acknowledgment before the Father; in 3:12 they are promised the right to a place in God’s temple with the name of God and Jesus written on them; in 3:21 they are promised the right to sit with Jesus on his throne.

Are you suffering? Are you persecuted? Do you feel that Christianity ruins your reputation? My friend, as a Christian you follow Jesus, who was h...