Communion, Review: Nutshell Christology
Since this is the second Sunday of
the month, this is the time which we celebrate communion. You know, one of the
ideas behind worship is the idea of celebration. That’s what we had on Friday
night. Friday night was different from Bible class. It was an installation
service. It was a celebration of something; and that is what worship is. It’s
to celebrate what God has done for us. The Lord’s Table is indeed a celebration
of the Person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what is spoken of
in the two elements of the communion meal. Now you know that the elements of
the communion meal did not originate at the Last Supper when our Lord met with
His disciples and instituted the Lord’s Table. It actually has its roots in the
original Passover feast that Israel celebrated in approximately 1446 B.C. when
God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. In that meal were incorporated the
unleavened bread and the cup of wine; the unleavened bread was taken by the
Lord at the Last Supper and it was invested with new meaning.
The fact that it was unleavened has
symbolic significance. Leaven in the Old Testament (OT) represented sin. At the
beginning of Passover you also have a seven-day feast of unleavened bread. The
day before Passover begins the parents go through the house and sweep out and
remove all of the leaven and they make a ritual show of it in a modern orthodox
Jewish home. It is a sign of purification, removing sin. It is also symbolic of
what we do at the beginning of every Bible class, and that is to confess our
sins. It is just as they were sanctifying the home, we are sanctifying our
souls. We are recognizing the need to be cleansed from sin. They would remove
leaven from the house and then they would have the Passover meal. Leaven cannot
be present in the bread because the symbolism of the bread is that it
represents the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. It represents His body, who He is. That is a different symbolism than the cup.
The cup represents what Jesus Christ
did for us on the cross. Therefore, the cup was originally a cup of wine. Some
discussion has come up in some circles that asks, well, wasn’t it grape juice?
No, it was wine. Have you ever tried to keep grape juice to not ferment in a
hot Mediterranean climate? It doesn’t happen. The Jews never understood that
fermentation was leavening; otherwise, they would have never have had wine and
to this day they would not have wine in the home once they’ve removed the
leaven. It was the legalistic Baptist who came along in the 19th
century who decided based upon the American temperance movement that we
shouldn’t have alcohol in church. So they changed it to grape juice and a
Baptist pastor by the name of Welch developed a process to keep grape juice
from fermenting. He started a whole business that way. Legalism pays
(laughter).
But the Lord’s Table is our
opportunity to stop on a periodic basis and reflect on who Jesus Christ is and
what He has done for us. It is that opportunity when we all recognize that
there’s nothing special in anyone of us. That despite whatever talents,
abilities, whatever position in life, whatever status, whatever economic
standing a person may have, we are all in the same boat when it comes to
salvation. We’re all sinners condemned before the bar of God’s justice. We must
all come into the presence of God on the basis of the completed work of Jesus
Christ on the cross. It’s real easy for us, if you haven’t noticed, to slip
into arrogance on an occasion or two. We tend to forget that we are all sinners
saved by grace and we all have a sin nature and we all still fail. The Lord’s
Table is a great opportunity for us to stop and reflect on that. It sort of
brings us back to ground zero once a month to recognize that we are who we are
solely because of whom God is and what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross.
In the early church the Corinthians
would come together and the tradition in the early church was that the church
has a meal surrounding the Lord’s Table just as the Passover meal out of Jewish
tradition was part of the ritual; and then they would conclude with the bread
and the cup, an indication that it was alcoholic was that they got drunk. They
wouldn’t drink just a tiny little cup like we do. They had goblets and they
would come and have a big covered dish dinner and bring all the kosher food and
everybody would sit around and they would eat until they were full. They just
gorged themselves and then they would get drunk. As a result of that, there was
divine discipline on that Corinthian congregation; and in the Lord’s Table God
punished them because they were treating it lightly. There were many Paul said,
who were sick and weak spiritually, and some had died the sin unto death.
There is a warning that Paul gives
that we are to examine ourselves to make sure that we are right; that we have
the right attitude when it comes to the Lord’s Table; that we have indeed
cleansed our souls from sin through the use of 1 John 1:9, which says, “If we
confess our sins,” which means to admit or acknowledge our sins to God the
Father, then “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.” We always begin with a few moments of silent prayer,
and then we pass out the elements. The Lord’s Table is for anyone who is a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not to be restricted by church membership or
any other human factor. All that is required, all that is necessary for you to
participate is that you have put your faith alone in Christ alone and are a
member of the universal body of Christ.
Since this is our first time to have
communion together we’re still working out some of the details in how we carry
out the procedure. What we will do is we will have a few moments of silent
prayer and then I will return thanks. Let’s bow our heads together and pray.
Father, we do thank You for this opportunity to gather together to reflect upon
the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. The bread that we are about to partake of
represents His Person. That He is He of whom the Scripture says was without
sin. He is sinless and the Scripture tells us that He who knew no sin was made
sin for us. As we partake of the bread, Father, we pray that we might be
mindful of the fact that it was necessary for You to send Your Son, the eternal
Second Person of the Trinity, Your Son whom You love, Your only Son, to come
and enter into the human race so that He could be rejected, suffer, and die on
the cross for our sins, where He paid the sin penalty that we might enjoy the
benefits of that freely given to us by faith in Him alone. We ask Your blessing on the bread in Christ’s Name. Amen. It is our
custom to retain the bread until all have been served.
Our Lord then took the bread and
having broken it He passed it out to the disciples and He said, “This is My body which is given as a substitute for you. Take and
eat.”
The symbolism of the cup is designed
to represent the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The point of analogy in the
wine is the death of Christ on the cross. It is a picture of blood. It is red.
It is not white wine. It’s red wine. It’s a picture of the shed blood on the
cross. But the shed blood on the cross is actually an idiom representing His
death. It is a picture of His atoning work, His spiritual substitutionary death
on the cross. As we partake of the cup we are to be mindful of that spiritual
sacrifice; that time between 12 noon and 3 p.m. when the sins of every single
human being were poured out upon Him on the cross; when He suffered in agony
that went far beyond that of the physical torture that He had endured leading
up to the cross. I think this is one of the reasons why the Scriptures
emphasize that He was silent like a sheep being led before its shearers. He
only screamed out once He began to endure the pain of bearing our sins. It was
so much more horrible than anything we could ever imagine. Let us bow our heads
together and give thanks for the cup.
Our Father, we do thank you for what
this cup represents in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, when He hung there on
that cross on Golgotha and You and Your righteousness imputed to Him all of the
sins of the human race, so that salvation was completely paid for, sins were
completely paid for, so that the issue would no longer be our sins; the issue
would be Jesus Christ. The Scripture says that the issue is to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. Father, we pray that we’d be mindful of its
significance as we partake of the cup. We pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen. It
is our custom to retain the cup until all have been served. Our Lord then took
the cup. It was the third cup in the ritual of the Passover meal known as the
cup of redemption. And He took the cup and He said, “This is the new covenant
of My blood which is given for you. As often as you
drink this do so in remembrance of Me.” Let’s stand
together and we’ll sing hymn 258, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
The ministry of giving is part of
every believer’s spiritual life. In many ways it may be a barometer of our own
spiritual growth. It certainly is a barometer of our gratitude toward God for
gracious giving is a response of gratitude of what God has done graciously in
our own lives. Scripture says that we are to give not grudgingly nor of
necessity, for God loves a cheerful; that is a grace oriented
believer. At this time we will take up a collection. It is the responsibility
of every believer-priest to support the local church where he is being fed as
well as to support foreign missions. Let us pray. Father, we do thank You for
these gifts and the giver, for the spiritual growth that lies in the motivation
behind the gifts. We ask Your blessing on this in
Christ’s Name. Amen.
Before we begin our study this
evening we need to ask the Lord’s guidance on our study. Let’s bow our heads
together and pray. Father, we do thank You for this
opportunity to gather together this evening to study Your Word. We thank You
for Your Word, for it’s perspicacity, for it’s power, for the prophecy that You
have put into Your Word to give us an understanding of Your plans and purposes
in history. Now Father, as we study the Revelation this evening, we pray that
the Holy Spirit would challenge us with the things we study and would make
these things profitable for our own spiritual advance. We pray this in Christ’s
Name. Amen.
Last night we began a review that
will go on for three or four Sundays just to make sure we’re all up to date in
our understanding of Revelation. As a part of that I am going to be adding some
new things as I’ve gone through this once. I am going back, picking up some
threads here and there and tying them together. You can expect that not only
are we teaching Revelation, which has so much in it about the angelic conflict,
but as I warned you when I came, the angelic conflict
would intensify. Last night all the sound went down. There’s no recording from
last night whatsoever. The DVD worked great, but it is a silent
movie (laughter). So we will hope that tonight things will go better. We will
have sound, but no visual. We have to pray that the demons in the machinery
will somehow get removed. When I went to Preston City it took several months
before all of that finally got worked out.
One other little thing, those of you
who did not go to the Dead Sea Scrolls with us today out of fellowship; we got
there this morning and most of the group was there. We had an entry time of 11
a.m. and there was a very large group of obviously Jewish individuals who were
ready to come in right behind us. You could tell because all the men had on
their yamakas. As we went in we got our little
headsets and our microphones and we are listening, and after we’ve been in
about five minutes, going from one little display to the next, suddenly the
loud voice of their guide began to become apparent. We stopped and we began to
listen to him and during the break I asked him a little bit about who he was,
and in fact, I think I brought his card with me tonight. He is Lawrence Schiffman. He has written a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
He is the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies in the Skirball Department of Hebrew in Judaic Studies at NYU (New
York University) in New York. He knew Randy Price and had his book as well. We
just kind of slipped in and joined their group and we had an excellent lecture
on the introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls by a man who has translated some of
them and published some of his translations. Next time you won’t stay at home
(laughter).
We are in our study of Revelation.
Let’s see where we’re going here. We have to understand the overall framework
of Revelation, and so this is given in our main verse, our main text in
Revelation 1:19. Revelation 1:19 gives us the overall
structure of Revelation.
We went over this last night. We’ll
go over it a couple of hundred more times just to make sure you don’t forget
it. “Write therefore the things which you have seen” When this is said the
events of chapter one are almost over with. That refers to chapter one, “the things which are,” that is those things that are
taking place present time, the Church Age. This refers to Revelation 2–3,
“the things which shall take place after these things.” That is the future from
Revelation 4 on. Revelation 1 focuses on the glorified Christ who returns in a
vision for the Apostle John. He is going to commission him to write these things.
It is a vision of Jesus not as our Priest-Intercessor, but as the risen Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the Priest-Judge moving in the
midst of the churches. That is why He is walking in the midst of those seven
golden lampstands.
Revelation 2–3 is the
outworking of His judicial ministry to the church in the Church Age. These
seven churches represent the trends in the Church Age. At the end of Revelation
3 the church is raptured. This is indicated by Revelation 4:1
when John hears a voice from heaven that says “come up here and I will show you
the things that will take place after these things.” Not the things that
already took place at the destruction of Jerusalem. See there are some folks
that want to come along and say all of this is just code language for A.D. 70.
It is called preterism. We’ll get there if you
haven’t studied it with me already. Revelation 4–22 are
yet future in the post-Rapture period. Revelation 4–19 describes the
horrific judgments of the Tribulation period, as God purifies the human race
and prepares the human race for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ as the King
of kings and Lord of lords in Revelation 19.
Revelation 20 describes His kingdom
known as the Millennial Kingdom, the 1,000 year rule and reign of Christ, when
Jesus Christ reigns literally from the throne of David in Jerusalem; at the end
of which there is the great white throne judgment and then the present heavens
and earth are destroyed and we have a new heavens and new earth. The eternal
state is described in Revelation 21–22. All you need to remember is those
three things: the things which have been; the things
which are; and the things which will take place after these things. If you’ve
said that, you’ve given the structure of Revelation. You can easily summarize
Revelation. You just have to say, “We win; they lose.” You’ve got the whole
book. See, then everything else is just filling in the gaps.
We’re in Revelation 1 which is the
things that have been; the things that were, as in Revelation 1:19. If we’re to
outline Revelation 1:
We had communion this evening, so we
are running a little long, but we have some special events afterwards, so I
don’t know how far we will get in this review, but you may have to strap on
your seatbelts. You are in for a fast ride; but I am assuming that many of you
have gone through this and this is review.
Revelation 1:1, “The revelation from
Jesus Christ” the corrected translation “which God gave Him to show” or to
disclose to “His servants – things which must” take place in a rapid
manner, literally. He communicated it by sending His angel. You always have
this dynamic of angelic involvement. I will almost belabor this point to
boredom. Angels are used again and again and again as mediators in carrying out
both revelation and divine judgment in the book of Revelation. You can’t get
away from that. He communicated it by sending His angel to His servant John.
John then states his task that he bore witness, a legal term indicating that we
must understand this within the overall scope of what we refer to as the appeal
trial of Satan and the angelic conflict. Now that’s a new title; if that is a
new term for you, in about another week or two I will start doing an extensive
review of the appeal trial of Satan to set us up for what is happening in the
angelic realm in Revelation.
Revelation 1:2, he “bore witness to
the Word of God”; that is the revelation from God, “and to the testimony of
Jesus Christ.” Once again you have this technical legal term. Bearing witness
and giving testimony is the act of giving a deposition in a courtroom case. He
goes on to say, “to all things that he saw.” He is a faithful communicator of
this revelation. Revelation 1:3 gives us a blessing.
“Blessed is he who reads,” ANAGINOSKON.
ANAGINOSKON doesn’t mean to simply mean to sit
down to read in your morning devotions. It means to explain, actually to read
out loud, but in our context that means to explain it, to exegete it. Then we
come to the salutation itself, Revelation 1:4–6, “John, to the seven
churches that are in Asia.” This is not East Asia that is China, India, Burma,
Viet Nam; this is the Roman Proconsulate Province of
Asia, located on the western part of Turkey.
Last summer we had the privilege to
go to Ephesus, which is the first of these sites, and Ephesus looks a lot like
the Hill Country, only hotter. In early July it was 117 degrees and very dry.
This is the location. These seven churches represent the churches in the Church
Age. John says, “to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and
peace.” This is your standard Greek greeting in Christian letters, in Christian
epistles. It is the indication that grace comes only from God and grace
precedes peace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It is His unearned kindness
toward man. We don’t earn or deserve anything. Salvation is not based on who we
are or what we do; it is based on who God is and what Jesus Christ did on the
cross. We must always respond to God’s grace before we can have peace.
What Paul and the other writers of
Scripture did was to take these two common greetings, the common greeting of
the Greek was KARANNE, “Hello”; that’s how you said “Hello”; and for the common greeting of
the Jewish “shalom.” The writers of
Scripture under the inspiration of God combined these so that they had a
meaning that was greater than the sum of the parts. You can only have true peace
because you have responded to the grace of God in accepting the free offer of
salvation. Then we have the source, the origin of this revelation. It is given
in a trinitarian formula. The first person of the
Trinity, God the Father, is described as Him who is, who was, and who is to
come. The Holy Spirit is identified as the seven spirits before His throne.
This is a phrase taken from Zechariah indicating the full orb ministry of God
the Holy Spirit.
Then we come to Revelation 1:5,
which identifies the Third Person and we have three verses that focus on the
ministry of Jesus Christ. Where’s the emphasis? When I teach Bible Study
Methods I always tell students that you have to look at
repetition and you have to look at emphasis; when the Holy Spirit elaborates on
a point for two or three verses, that’s your emphasis. When you find a
statement or a phrase repeated even twice, pay a lot of attention to that
because the Holy Spirit is very economic in the way He uses His words and He
doesn’t repeat Himself very often. In fact, there is one verse in Proverbs
that’s repeated twice, “There is a way that seems right to man but the end
thereof is death” (Proverbs 14:12; Proverbs 16:25). Now why do you suppose that
would be repeated verbatim two times in Proverbs?
We are told (Revelation 1:5–6)
that this is “from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.” Then you have two
triplets. John is fond of triplets; that is the threefold phrases
in his writing of Revelation. First we have Jesus Christ identified as the
“faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of
the earth.” Then there’s a dedication “To Him who loved us and washed us from
our sins” by means of “His own blood; and made us a kingdom of priests to our
God. To Him be the glory and dominion forever. Amen.” Look at the structure
here. When it comes to Jesus, we are told that this is “from”, APO plus the
genitive indicating ultimate source. This is “from Jesus Christ, the faithful
witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the
earth.”
I’ve structured this on the slide so
that you would see that these three titles are seen as equal:
1. He is the faithful witness. This
describes His ministry during the First Advent. He was a witness in the appeal
trial of Satan. His life is a witness to the integrity of God and He is
faithful.
2. He is said to be the firstborn
from the dead. This refers to His resurrection after the accomplishment of
salvation. Therefore, it stands for the entire work of salvation accomplished
on the Cross. He is the firstborn from the dead because He has conquered sin
and death by means of His work on the Cross.
3. He is the ruler over the kings of
the earth. This is a proleptic use. That word means
it is looking to the future. You can learn a few vocabulary words here.
He is not actually the ruler over
the kings of the earth right now because He is seated at the right hand of God
the Father in heaven. But He will activate that title. It is His potentially,
but not actually. He will not activate that title until the return at the end
of the second coming when He returns and you see that title emblazoned on Him,
“the King of kings and Lord of lords,” at which time He conquers the kingdoms
of the world and defeats Satan, the Antichrist, and the false prophet, and
establishes the messianic kingdom.
Then there is a dedication: “To Him
who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us a kingdom
of priests to His God.” Now one thing I want to point out here is the structure
in the Greek in these two verses (Revelation 1:5–6), which indicates
three different ways of talking about Jesus. Some people get confused because
in Revelation 1:4 it says that this is from the One who is and was and is to
come. They scratch their heads and say, well, this book ends with the coming of
Jesus, so that must be who this refers to. How can
this phrase “Who is to come” be a reference to God the Father? Last night I
went through several verses in Revelation 4, Revelation 11, and Revelation 21.
You have these references where you have God and the Lamb. You have the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb. You have two personages and yet the One who’s
sitting on the throne is the One who is called the One who was and who is and
who is to come four different times in the book of Revelation. So that must say
something about the Father coming.
This is indicated in Revelation
21:3ff that He, God, will tabernacle or dwell among us and establish His temple
among us in the new heavens and the new earth and we will see His face in
Revelation 22. No one has seen God the Father at any time. It is the only
begotten, the unique Son of God that has explained Him. So in the book of
Revelation the Father is also coming. He is the One who is to come. This is
indicated with the Greek structure. You have the introduction, “Grace and
peace,” the salutation, “from”. This is the Greek word APO. It’s used three times with each
individual. That indicates that there are three distinct individuals. If they
were three different titles of the same person, the preposition would only be
used one time. They’re linked by the conjunction KAI. So you have God the Father as He
who is and was and who is to come. You have the Spirit, who is identified under
the title “the seven spirits” who were before His throne,
that is God the Father’s throne; and third, Jesus Christ identified as
the “faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the
kings of the earth.”
This is a salutation. It adds a
heavy note of seriousness and somberness to this introduction. This book that
bears a blessing in Revelation 1 and warns of a curse for mishandling it in
Revelation 22 is serious! I heard one pastor one time say, well, I’ll never
preach through Revelation because people just want to hear it because they want
to have their emotions stimulated and their curiosity satisfied about future
things. Well that just showed that that pastor had a very shallow understanding
of the book of Revelation. That may be true that that is why a lot of people
come out; because they want to find out what’s going
to happen next. But this book is a rich study in a lot of different doctrines,
not the least of which is going to be a study of worship. Because when we get
to Revelation 4-5 and other chapters later on, we see a picture of the angels
in heaven, the church and OT saints worshiping before the throne of God. We will
begin to develop from the text a sound concept of what biblical worship is all
about; as well as understanding the theology of singing because that is indeed
what takes place before the throne as they sing praises to God.
Jesus Christ is referred to as the
faithful witness, HO MARTUS HO PISTOS. He is not simply the witness, but He is the faithful
witness. Only God is faithful. This is a clear reference to His deity. Jesus
Christ or the deity of Jesus Christ was not something that the Emperor of
Constantine cooked up in A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicea
to unite the Roman Empire and provide a power base for him. This is the popular
theory that is being promoted in the Da Vinci Code. I
will mention that again and again until you are probably sick of it, but this
is going to be a hot issue next year. You have Ron Howard’s production team
that is going to produce that movie and Tom Hanks is going to play the main
character. This is going to be a major blockbuster movie, extremely popular,
and the whole theme of the movie and the whole idea of the book is to destroy
Christian’s confidence in the canonicity of Scripture and the deity of Christ
and in anything that He did.
This book in hardback form has been
out for a year and a half, sold over six million copies. I can’t remember a
hardback book that has sold like that. It is a book that is a sign of the
times, folks, and I don’t mean that eschatologically.
It signifies what is happening in our generation. It resonates with people
because people today don’t want there to be a God to exist or a God who has
entered into or has interfered with human history. This gives them a rational
for justifying their negative volition, their rejection of God. But it’s also
going to provide a tremendous opportunity for us to talk about Jesus. But in
order to talk about Jesus to anybody who has read this, you have to talk
intelligently about Jesus. You have to know what these issues are. That is why
you need to go back, if you haven’t, you need to listen to that series I did on
Who is Jesus last year and listen to
those tapes on the Da Vinci Code and there are two or three
books written by Christians now.
You need to study those so you can
be a well-prepared witness in your evangelism. It is not just enough to slap
somebody upside the head with the gospel and say, well just believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved; because what they are hearing is that there
is no reason to (believe). They’re going to say give me a reason for this hope
or confidence that is in you. 1 Peter 3:15 says that
we are to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us. We have
to become more sophisticated. I think Christians today have a much more
difficult time than believers 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Not that the issues have
really changed, but I think that with the advent of television news, satellite,
the mass production of books and information, all the material that is
available on the Internet, that this is a time that the unbeliever is much more
sophisticated than any other time in history. He’s heard more of the challenges
to Christianity.
Frankly, believers are a lot more
sophisticated than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They have access to more
information. Consequently, they have greater questions. We need to recognize
that this “our Lord”, the deity of Christ, is something that goes back to the
OT, identifying Him as the “faithful witness” recalls the OT passage of
Lamentations 3:21–23, talking about God and His mercies. “The LORD’S (compassions or) lovingkindness indeed never
cease, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, Great is
Thy faithfulness.” In 1 Corinthians 1:9 we are told
“God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord.” And then, Hebrews 10:23 “Let us hold fast the confession of
our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful.” It is God who is
faithful, not man, in the Scriptures. Finally, Revelation 19:11, when Jesus
returns on a white horse “He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and
in righteousness He judges and makes war.” Faithfulness is an indication of His
deity.
Next, He is called “the firstborn
from the dead.” This is a title of Christ in reference to His resurrection.
Passages such as Colossians 1:18 utilize this term. He is “the firstfruit” according to 1 Corinthians 15. Acts 26:23 says
“that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the
dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.” Also,
Romans 1:4. I’m just going to skip through these without reading them all. You
can check some of these a little later. He is called the ruler of the kings of
the earth. This is a title that He will not activate until the Second Coming.
Right now Satan is still the prince of the power of the air and the god of this
age. But this title “Ruler of the kings of the earth” goes back to the OT. See,
you can’t understand the New Testament (NT) unless you understand the OT. The early
Christians in Acts didn’t just pop up and say, wow, isn’t this great! When
Peter preached to them he preached out of the OT. When Paul wrote those famous
lines to Timothy and said that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”, he’s not
talking about Acts and Romans. He’s talking about Genesis to Malachi. Look at
the context.
We have to know the OT. You have to
know the difference between Malachi and Nahum. You have to know where Habakkuk
is and the Song of Solomon. You have to know the key players and the difference
between Mephibosheth and Mahershalalhashbaz.
It’s a sign of the poverty of the modern evangelical church that most of those
names and books that I just mentioned kind of fly past you and you don’t know
them. Maybe we ought to start singing those songs the kids sing with the books
of the Bible just so all the adults will know all the OT books and all the NT
books. I talked about prep school last night and one of the things I want to
see in prep school is “Sword Drill”. It is a game. It’s fun, but it teaches
everybody where the books of the Bible are. If you are going to make the Bible
useable then you should know how to get around in the Bible.
Psalm 89 talks about not only Jesus
as firstborn; it is prophetic, but He is “the highest of the kings of the
earth.” Then Revelation 1:5 describes Jesus as the one
who loved us, New King James and King James, but in the New American Standard
and New International Version it has “loves us and washed us from our sins.”
Then we have an instrumental dative, by means of “His own blood.” This is the
means of our salvation. Now last night I pointed out that there are some
textual problems now and then in Revelation. We’re sure what the text says, but
there are different words in different manuscripts. Some say “to Him who loves
us” and those few manuscripts that were used as a basis for translating the
King James had a past tense of AGAPEO there; and so it was translated “loved us.” But
actually it should be “loves us.” It is emphasizing the ongoing love of the Lord
Jesus Christ for us.
The love of God demonstrated on the
cross when He sent His Son to die for you, He is demonstrating to you day in
and day out in your spiritual life. He will never leave us or forsake us. He is
always faithful even when we are faithless. You can always depend upon Him even
when we are undependable. That is because He is the one who loves us. Because
of His love for us it began with His work on the cross. This is the classic
demonstration of what love is. There again we have another textual problem in
the Greek. The copier either added a letter or took out a letter, so I wrote
this up on the overhead so you could see the difference:
lu,santi, lusanti OR
lou,santi, lousanti
lu,w luō
OR
lou,w, louō
to release OR to wash
Some manuscripts have the top word,
which is LUSANTI; other manuscripts have LOUSANTI, pronounced the same way. But one means “to wash” and
one means “to release.” So which is it? Both fit context, so you have to
compare manuscripts. The first word comes from LUO meaning to release; and we are
certainly free and released from our sins, that’s true. The second is LOUO, which means
“to wash”; and that is the imagery that is used many times in Scripture; that
we are washed, cleansed of our sins by means of His blood. I believe that the
better reading here is “to wash.” We are washed from our sins, removed from
them by means of His blood. That is the spiritual substitutionary death of
Christ on the cross.
That term “blood” is a word that
really challenges a lot of people. They think that it refers to the literal
blood of Jesus. Many of you know that there was a medieval heresy that the
angels scooped up all of the literal shed blood of Jesus, carried it to heaven,
and poured it out on a heavenly altar. That completely misses the whole
emphasis of this metaphor and I have a quote here that I thought some would
like to hear just to show that my interpretation isn’t just made up out of old
cloth. This is from a book by E. W. Bullinger called Figures of Speech in the New Testament.
It is about three to four inches thick. I remember in Hebrew class in seminary,
on the exegesis of Psalms; poetic literature is filled with figures of speech,
that I just about broke the spine of that book because you were in it every
single day for hours.
Bullinger says of this figure, “In the New Testament, the
expression “the blood of Christ” is the figure metalepsis.” Most of you have no clue what that is because all you were ever
taught in school was that there were similes and metaphors. See how horrible
your secular modern education is. If all you had were similes and metaphors
where did he get the other 900 pages in that book? It is the figure metalepsis “because first the ‘blood’ is put by (synecdoche).” See a metalepsis
is two different figures of speech joined together; one is synecdoche. It is
put (by synecdoche) “for blood-shedding: i.e., the death of Christ, as distinct
from His life; and then His death is put for the perfect satisfaction made by
it, for all the merits of the atonement effected by it: i.e., it means not merely the actual blood corpuscles.” I would
disagree with the “not merely”. “Neither does it mean His death as an act, but
the merits of the atonement effected by it and associated with it.”
It stands for something. It is a
physical representative of a spiritual reality because the penalty for sin was
spiritual death. Physical death is a consequence. Suffering is a consequence.
Sickness is a consequence. Thorns and thistles are a consequence. These are all
the consequences of sin listed in Genesis 3. Shedding of blood is clearly a
metaphor in Scripture for violent death. This is seen in Genesis 9:6, the basis
for capital punishment. “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be
shed, for in the image of God He made man.” See, this is an emphasis. It’s an
emphasis on the violent nature of the blood. It doesn’t mean that the person
had to die by shedding blood. What if you poison them? What if you strangle
them? Wouldn’t that still be murder? Sure it would. But it is captured in that
figure of speech “the shedding of blood.”
Revelation 1:6, He “has made us
kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever
and ever, Amen.” Jesus Christ made us kings. This is what we will do. We will
rule and reign with Him. This focuses on our future ministry. This is why we
need to live today in light of eternity. Revelation 5:10 says, “You have made
them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the
earth.” But not only that, Revelation 20:6, “Blessed and holy is he who has
part in the first resurrection.” That’s us; literally
an inheritance in the first resurrection. “Over such the second death has no
power, but they shall be priests of God.” Now that is a challenging idea that I
am wrestling with. Not only is there going to be a resurrection of the Zadokite priesthood in the function of the millennial
temple during the Millennium, but there is also going to be a function of
church age believers that is a priestly function in the millennial kingdom.
Remember, a prophet is someone who
takes God’s Word and communicates it to man. A priest’s function is a
go-between between man and God. How are we, as church age believers in
resurrection bodies functioning as priests in the millennial kingdom? I don’t
know. This is the only reference to it; and as you can tell, descriptions about
it are rather lacking. We’ll have to do a lot of thinking and studying before
we get to that particular point. Then in Revelation 1:6 John ends with the
statement “to Him,” that is Jesus Christ, “be glory and dominion forever and
ever. Amen.” That word “dominion” is an interesting word, KRATOS, and it is
used again in Revelation 2:1 of the power and authority of Jesus over the
angels of the churches. We are told in Revelation 2:1 that He holds the seven
angels in His hand. It is the verb KRATEO. Interesting how these words link together. It is
just like a daisy chain. You’ve got to know the original languages so you can
tie these things together, string them together, because that is what the Holy
Spirit wants us to notice.
The last verse, Revelation 1:7,
“Behold, He is coming with the clouds.” This is not a reference to the Rapture
when Jesus comes “in the clouds.” This is a reference to the Second Coming when
He comes with literally “the clouds.” There’s an article in the Greek. And
every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. “Coming with the clouds” indicates the coming of judgment. Joel 2, Zechariah, other
passages indicate that when Jesus comes at the Second Coming in judgment He
will be enveloped in clouds and there will be clouds of doom on the earth. The
phrase “every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him” comes out of
Zechariah and is a reference that “even they who pierced Him” is of the Jews.
“Every eye will see Him” references all of humanity. “Even” is a sub-group of
that whole. “Even they who pierced Him” indicates that the Jews will finally
recognize that Jesus is the Messiah when He returns. “Then all the tribes of
the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.” We will finish there this
evening. Next Sunday we’ll come back and look at the statement of authority in
Revelation 1:8 related to the Father. There are too many details in that to
take the time with tonight, so I want to wait and cover that next time as we
set up for giving the commission to John to write on the Isle of Patmos in
Revelation 1:9.
With our heads bowed and our eyes
closed, Father, we do thank You for this opportunity to study Your Word this
evening, to recognize the seriousness of the nature of this revelation. There
is a warning to us that the time is near, a recognition
that even though we are believers and we are saved and have an eternal destiny,
there is still a time of accountability for us. And this revelation is designed
to bring us up short, to capture our attention, to make us realize that we must
be serious about our own spiritual life because we are being prepared to rule
and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ. At this time we pray that if there is
anyone here this evening that is unsure of their salvation or uncertain of
their eternal destiny that they would take this opportunity to make that sure
and certain. Scripture says, “Believe on the Jesus Christ and you will be
saved.” It is not a matter of changing your life, bargaining with God, somehow
entering into some ritual that impresses God with your piety. It is a matter of
appropriating the perfect righteousness of Christ. This is
only done by trusting in Him alone. This is your opportunity to
determine that eternal destiny by trusting in Him for your salvation. Father,
we pray that You would challenge us with the things
that we’ve studied this evening. We pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.