Come! (Revelation 22:6-21)

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Well, good morning church. You can go ahead and grab your Bibles open up to Revelation 22 that will be the last page for sure. Not sure which side of the last page, but it’s there. Revelation 22 will be starting in verse six this morning, and just as you’re turning there, we have a new standard set for sermon responsiveness. Do you see how the kids responded when, you know, Jake broke the mug and stuff? That’s the level okay, that we need from here on out. Alright? Thank you. There we go. We’re ready. Revelation, 22 verse six, just as you’re turning there, imagine, you know, you wake up in the morning. You got your coffee going, or T in my case, you know, blinking your eyes awake, you spent some time in the Word because you do that before you check your phone, of course. But you finally get to the point where you check your phone and you see you’ve got an email from the Royal protection group letting you know that the king is coming to visit your house, King Charles the third, he’s on a tour of the states, or something like that. He wants to show that he’s a man of the people. And congratulations that you’re the house he’s going to visit. What would you do he’s coming next week? Spot a cleaning maybe make sure the kids shower. Maybe a home repair project that you’ve been putting off for a while, right? Like we got a chunk of drywall missing in our stairs. And I can just keep thinking, look at calamari. Like I’m not fixing drywall now, but, but maybe, maybe, if the King were coming, I actually would. The point is you would get ready if the King were coming. You know where I’m going with this. The King is coming. The King is coming, and he is coming soon, and we need to get ready. And that’s it like, that’s the big idea, right there. That’s all we’re going to talk about this morning. Okay, live like Jesus is coming soon. Live like Jesus is coming soon. Now, what does that mean practically for us, though, that’s the key question that Jesus and John and an angel are going to help us answer this morning, three kind of primary exhortations in light of everything that’s gone before in the last 21 chapters of Revelation, all that we’ve seen about what’s coming, and this is the main takeaway, that’s what’s so important. I want to make sure we have this in our mind. The purpose of the book of Revelation is not so that we’ll have an End Times chart on our wall at home with newspaper clippings attached to it so we can see what’s coming and when that wasn’t the goal ever, in part two, because it was written to people who lived in the first century and he didn’t come like they weren’t even newspapers. So you know that wasn’t ever the goal. The goal was that we would live changed lives now because of what’s coming then. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. So three exhortations. We’ll kind of take them one at a time. Ton of overlap. That’s just kind of how this works, that you could probably just put any of them anywhere, and it would work. But let’s start with the first one, which is to practice the word practice the word revelation, 22 verses six to nine. I read it for us. The angel said to me, these words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God who inspires the Prophet, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place. Look, I’m coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll? I John, am the one who heard and saw these things, and when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. But he said to me, don’t do that. I’m a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets, with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God, but practice the word. Alright? What does John say here? The angel Jesus. So the angel says, These words are trustworthy and true. Again, these words everything that’s come before in Revelation, the past 21 chapters, and these words are trustworthy and true. And we’ve come across the phrase faithful and true a lot in Revelation. It is actually the same word. It is translated differently because we don’t usually describe words as faithful like they don’t keep promises, but they are the promises that are kept, and therefore they are trustworthy. And who is speaking these faithful and true words? It’s the one who keeps getting called Faithful and True. In other words, the words bear the character of their speaker, and we know the speaker. And John lets us know the speaker. Here, it’s God Himself. God is the one who inspires the prophets. You. And don’t miss what that means. It means that God is choosing to reveal Himself to us so that we can know him and know him accurately as he really is. The accuracy piece is important. That’s why God inspires the prophets. Here’s the way Peter says it. Second Peter one, verse 21 for prophecy never had its origins in a human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That word carried there, they’re carried along by the Holy Spirit. In Greek, it’s the word Pharaoh. We get our word fairy from it, like, you know, boat takes cars and people across the river, or something like that. It’s, it’s a good analogy, actually, for what happens. Because you think different people get on this ferry, and they’re probably doing different things. Some of you love boats. You’re out front, you’re doing, you know, I’m the king of the world, or something like that. Somebody’s down below reading a book, because that’s what they would rather do. Somebody scanning for wildlife. Somebody’s leaning over the railing, puking their guts out. You know, we all do our own thing on a fairy. So we’re all still our individual human selves, and yet the fairy gets everybody where they need to go. Like that’s a picture of what happens in Revelation. When God inspires the prophets, He doesn’t give them a script of what to say exactly he does sometimes, like the 10 Commandments, or something like that. But ordinarily, it’s not a script, nor is it just inspiration, though, like, oh, I had this great idea. I think it came from the Lord. I’m gonna write it down, because then that would maybe not be phrased exactly right. We could trust the idea, but not the individual words. No, we’ve got a dual authorship, humans, right under God’s superintendence, so that every word is exactly the word that should be written, so that it’s free from all error. We can trust it entirely, even though it is written by distinct humans. And I mean, John’s very distinct, even you read this, John, he’s writing in Greek. That’s not his first language. It’s not even his second language. It’s most likely his third language, and it shows in the writing, by the way. But it doesn’t change the fact that you know this is what God wants us to know, that these words are trustworthy, so important. So God shows us exactly what we need to know, again, not the specific details or the specific timing, but this big picture full of symbols, these large and startling figures that show us what’s coming and what our response should be now, but it’s important that we Get this, because he is, as he says, coming soon. Now, soon is a relative term. It’s been a couple 1000 years since this was written down. And you think that doesn’t sound soon, yes, but he’s riffing on Daniel 245, we’ve come across this passage many times in Revelation. This is when Nebuchadnezzar has his dream of the statue all these kingdoms that are coming, and then there’s gonna be the last one. This rock that becomes a mountain grows to fill the whole earth. Daniel 245 says, the great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy, interesting, right? Trustworthy and true. Same words, but the great God has shown the king what will take place in the future? He says, because right now we’re still at the head of the statue, and you’ve got the, you know, the torso, you got the legs, you got the we got a whole bunch of kingdoms to go. Well, when John is writing, the rock has come, Jesus’s Kingdom is here. It’s now being realized. And so since it’s in the process of being realized even now, that means we need to be ready, like when mom texts to say, I’m on my way. That’s when you start cleaning up or stop doing whatever it is you shouldn’t have been doing. Right? That’s what’s happening here. In fact, that’s exactly what Jesus himself says about the end times. Shortly before his death, he gives a talk. It’s known as the Olivet Discourse, because he’s on the Mount of Olives when he says it to his disciples. And he says, like, I don’t even know the time Jesus as human doesn’t even know the time that it’s coming, and so we all need to be ready at all times. He says, if the owner of the house had known at what time the robbers were coming. They
would have been ready. They would have been awake. They would have turned the alarm system on, something like that. So what do we do to get ready to live like Jesus is coming soon, and we see it in this sixth benediction that is given here. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll, says it again in verse nine, that all who keep the words of this scroll, so it’s repeated. It’s so important we keep the words of this prophecy. Keep here meaning, keep like the way you keep your promises that you you. Them into practice. We keep them, by the way, because we know that they’re faithful and true these words, because they’re spoken by the one who is himself the Faithful and True, and he wants us to know them. So we cling to God’s words in this life like a shipwreck survivor clinging to a life preserver, like knowing we will not make it unless we’re holding on to this. Because what does this tell us? It reminds us who God is. I’m just saying about that. In fact, what troubles we can expect in this life, and there will be a lot of them, and they’re going to be hard, like we got that in Revelation, this is not going to be easy. It’s a time of tribulation and distress, and we know how the story ends the best part, so that we know that in the end, we have no need to fear. We can endure. We can persevere. So like I said to to keep these words is like keeping a promise, so we don’t just read them, study them, memorize them. All good things to do, of course, but no, we put into practice these words. That’s why I said this is practice the word because it tells us to I mean that that should be enough for us. God’s word says it. I will do it. We do have an added incentive to trust the word here, because John mentions in verse eight that he is an eyewitness. He’s saying, I really saw all these things. Now, John was an eyewitness already. He was an eyewitness to Christ’s life and his death and his resurrection. That’s important. We’ll actually talk about that next week. We’ll be in John’s gospel. But here he saw these things as well. He said, You can trust me. I really did see them. In other words, we’re being called not to a blind faith, but to a very reasonable faith, because we know these words are true. Then what does John do when the angel speaks, he falls down to worship the angel again. By the way, he already did this a couple chapters ago. You’re going, why didn’t he learn his lesson? By the way, just for a moment, think about what that says of the glory of God, that when people are in front even of His messengers, they’re tempted to worship, and this is just a dim reflection of God’s overwhelming glory. But why didn’t he learn his lesson that piece, of course, I mentioned last week, there’s a lot of overlap between this section and the section when the angel gives John a tour of Babylon, right? They both begin the same way, like, come with me, and I’ll give you a, you know, I’ll take give you on a tour of this city. So there’s a lot of overlap there with a vision of Babylon. That was the last time he tried to worship the angel. I think that’s intentional. And we’re going back to this moment, because remember Babylon. She’s the false bride, the harlot Babylon. One commentator says it like this. He says the hallmark of the true bride the church, in contrast to the harlot Babylon, is that she worships no one but God, and waits for no bridegroom but the lamb. And so here’s this reminder that word and worship go together. The word reveals the God who is there, and when we see him for who he is, we respond in worship, in love that manifests in obedience, putting His Word into practice. So as you get ready for Jesus to come like it’s just worth asking yourself right now, am I practicing the word am I actually putting into practice what I’m reading in this text? Is there any area where I know that I’m a hearer of God’s word, but not a doer of it? And now is the time to repent, to turn to trust and to live like we trust by living in obedience, practice the word first exhortation, second exhortation, prepare your life. Prepare your life. From verses 10 to 15, let me read it for us. Then he told me, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near. Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong. Let the vile person continue to be vile. Let the one who does right continue to do right. Let the holy person continue to be holy. Look, I am coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. So again. 10, the time is near, and that’s actually why he tells John not to seal up the prophecy, because we’re in these last days, as we talked about throughout this book, we’re in that three and a half year period, symbolic period from Christ’s ascension until he comes again. And so since we’re in those last days, we gotta know what is coming. This is very different from Daniel’s vision. Again, Daniel 12, verse four. He’s told seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. We’re in the time of the end, so now we need to know so that we can live well. And that’s exactly where the angel goes next, except it’s these really odd instructions, but the one who does wrong, just keep doing wrong. If you’re vile, just, you know, get even more vile. This doesn’t sound like scripture at first. What is happening here? Yeah, be a little bit like you’re on vacation at the Grand Canyon, and the tour guide is there, you know, and you’re kind of walking along the edge and and the tour guide begins to go through the statistics for how many people have plummeted to an untimely demise because they weren’t careful. And the tour guide wraps up by saying so by all means, if you want that perfect selfie, yep, go ahead. Stand way over the edge, you know, get your arm out. Don’t worry about your footing. I’m sure it’ll go great. Those are not instructions. That’s a warning, right? And that’s what’s being given here as well. The key point that’s being made in this verse, verse 11, is that how you’re living now is preparing you for your eternity, because you will just keep growing more and more like who you are, you’re just gonna keep becoming what you are doing, which means every choice we make matters significantly. It’s like a ship, right? Just slightly off course means you end up in a really different place than you were expecting you were hoping to head, you know, straight West, and you’re going slightly north west, you know, all of a sudden you’re in the Arctic Ocean, and your ship is surrounded by ice, and it is crushing the hull until you all perish like that’s how much this matters. Peter says something interesting at one point. He talks about some of the opponents of the opponents of the gospel, and he says they have become experts in greed, and that’s the idea we are becoming experts in either sin or righteousness. I mean, expert. Think about what that word means. He’s like these guys. They got a masters in greed. They just got new certification, because it’s an exploitative greed now, like how impressed are we with them? It reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote, sow a thought and you reap an act. Sow an act and you reap a habit. So a habit, you reap a character, so a character, and you reap a destiny. And Revelation has told us too much about that destiny for us not to take every act seriously, and you see what this looks like. Let me just give you an example in the area of lust, which is a significant one, and one where there are a lot of people who are experts in lust. You know, it starts with just a glance, a leer here or there, and pretty soon you’re graduating to pornography, something like that more and more time, more and more intense stuff. I mean, you think about what happens like they’ve done the science of the research on this right, like your brain actually changes. It is rewired so that you can’t look at people as people anymore, making true intimacy, which is what you were seeking all along, literally impossible. That’s what it looks like to become an expert in sin, for the vile person to just keep on being vile. So if that’s how serious this is, it’s worth asking the question, what’s your training regimen? What are you becoming? Are you preparing for eternity, intentionally, zealously pursue holiness today, right now.
Jesus says, If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, because it’s better for you, he says, to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. That’s exactly what Revelation is telling us here too. Like cut it off. That means take radical action. That’s a serious step. Exactly We should take serious steps here. I talked about coveting and greed last week at the end of this sermon. You know, it’s interesting. There are two men that Jesus confronts about exactly that sin, and they respond really differently, because Zacchaeus, when he meets Jesus, he says, I sell half my possessions and everything I’ve stolen, I will pay back four times and. Was a radical step. He saw sin and he cut it out of his life. The rich young ruler he needed, actually a more radical step, because this infection of greed was deeper in his life. Jesus says, You got to sell everything, and he says, No, thanks, I prefer wealth and hell like that’s what we’re talking about. We talk about a radical step, and maybe for some of you, it is coveting and greed, like we talked about last week. Maybe it’s how you talk. You’re an incorrigible gossip, or there’s just nothing that you couldn’t find a reason to complain about. Or you lie, you’re You’re a liar. You practice it a lot. I mean, what’s a radical step there? Like, if you keep sinning with your mouth, maybe stop talking and practice the discipline of silence. That’s what this would look like. Sin is not ended by multiplying words. Proverbs tells us, so stop multiplying words. You go, I’m gonna be tempted to gossip here. Then don’t respond at all. Don’t talk. Or maybe your radical step is just you need to bring sin into the light. There’s something you need to talk to your community group about, or your journey group about this week. That’s why we have groups like Journey groups. We got that safe space. We’ve got the time, the room, to say, I need to tell you guys something, and that’s what it looks like. And some of you may be going, I’m not in a journey group and I’m not in a community group. Great, maybe that’s your step then, like, let’s get going, because the opportunity to change doesn’t last forever. We get fixed. We get stuck in our ways, like our steering wheel gets stuck, and after a while, we’re just headed off course. And there will come a moment when repentance is no longer possible because our hearts will have become irrevocably hardened, that thought should terrify us like the Grand Canyon tour guide’s words should terrify us. Light a fire under us, so that we prepare for eternity. Get ready, because Jesus is coming soon, and he tells us that he’s bringing his reward with him. Verse 12, the word reward there literally, is the word for wages, and we know what wages are. A wage is what you’ve earned. I agree to work eight hours at $20 an hour. At the end of those eight hours I am owed. Oh, man, that was too much, math, $160 okay? English, English guy, okay, that’s what I’ve earned. That’s the point. Is what I deserve exactly. I will give to each person according to what they have done, in other words, according to what they deserve, and according to that they will receive either judgment or blessing. We will receive either judgment or blessing as a result of how we’ve lived, because we do what we want, and so the choices we make show what’s in our heart and show what we deserve. Like I spent years as a teacher, when I was on the missions field, seven years English teacher, English teacher, not a math teacher. Okay, just be clear. And occasionally I would hand somebody to detention, and they’d be like, What? What am I gonna get attention for? I was like, because you didn’t do your homework, and when I talked to you about it, you were wildly disrespectful, and then I caught you in like, do I have to keep going here? Like, I didn’t think I was gonna have to explain to explain to you you’re getting a detention, not because I’m giving you one, but because you earned a detention. And that is what Jesus will say to us, this is what you deserve. And now you’re all sitting there thinking, hang on, that sounds like karma. What about grace? Yes, and amen. This is the heart of Christianity, of course, is that we don’t get what we deserve, because Jesus got what we deserve in our place. It’s like we just make this switch. He lived this perfect life, always obedient. So he’s got the reward, he’s got the blessing coming. We’ve got hell coming. And he says, I’ll switch with you. I’ll switch with you. It’s fine. I’ll go to the cross, I’ll bear the wrath of God, I’ll take the punishment in your place, and you can have my reward in my place instead. That’s the beauty of the gospel. But the proof that we have received grace is in a changed life. That’s the important point that John and Jesus are making here. James says it right. Faith without works is dead. It’s not real. Faith you have not actually taken hold of grace. He says, I’ll show you my faith by my deeds. Ephesians, two, eight and eight to 10. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. Great doesn’t matter what I do, oh, except verse 10, For we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do. Do good works. Peter second, Peter 110, he tells us, make every effort, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. I guess you are saved because God chose you, and he chose you not because you’re lovely, but because he’s loving. But now prove that he chose you by making every effort to confirm that choice. In other words, in Dallas, willard’s famous phrase grace is opposed to earning, not effort. If God’s grace is truly active in your life, you will make every effort to grow in holiness. You will become more like Jesus. Now, by the way, I’m not reading grace into Revelation. It’s not like I needed Peter and Paul and James to correct John here. It’s right there in the text, verse 14, blessed are those who wash their robes. Now that could sound like something we do. My robes are stained. I better wash them. You can picture, you know, like some Laura Ingalls, some prairie girl down by the creek with the washboard, you know, furiously scrubbing so that mom doesn’t know that her dress got stained, or something like that. But that’s not what this means, because we already saw how we wash our robes way back in chapter seven, Revelation, 714, they speaking of the multitude of those who belong to Christ, they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. That’s how it happens. It is all of grace, but we do apply grace to our lives in view of God’s mercies. There’s the grace we offer ourselves as living sacrifices to him. There is the effort, the work, the deeds. This is one of the things we strive to do in Journey groups. In particular, if you’ve been in Journey groups, you know what I’m talking about. This is why we go through a gospel primer. It’s why we have a gospel waltz every week, we’re learning to fight sin with the gospel, because the knowledge of the grace we’ve received is what motivates our new obedience in Christ. Because of grace, we not only can live different lives, but we want to live different lives. Just one example. Take conflict between people. You got somebody in your life that you just can’t stand anymore because they are making your life difficult, and you have run out of patience, like I just I wash my hands of this person, and then you stop and you think how difficult I have made Jesus’s life
and how patient he has been with me. And you thank God that he never said that’s it. I’m done with Brandon. I wash my hands of him. And you think I can go, I can go one more time because I sinned this much against the Lord. I can forgive this much and be patient with this much in this person’s life. So those who’ve been saved by grace live by grace. What happens to them? We get our seventh and final benediction. Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have the right to the tree of life, may go through the gates into the city. Okay, we get to go into the city we talked about last week that renewed, restored creation, we get to eat from the tree of life and live forever. But the rest we see in verse 15 are quarantined, this idea that we keep coming back to. They’re outside the city. They’re called dogs in Scripture, by the way. Dogs are not cute and cuddly pets. They are mangy, filthy scavengers. They’re those that return to their vomit the way sinners keep returning to sin. They roll in their filth, the picture of who we are apart from Christ, people like that, people who, instead of worshiping God, seek to control God through sorcery, or people who, instead of putting self to death and following Christ, choose to worship self through things like lust and hatred and idolatry and deceit, they’re cast out. And so once more, we need to ask ourselves. You need to ask yourself right now, which Am I truly? Am I verse 14, or am I verse 15? Cuz I’m one or the other. And by the way, don’t guess that’s the point of all of this. Look at the evidence of your life. Look at your deeds. Are they showing you that you have received grace or not? And maybe you don’t just need to look at the evidence of your life, but you need to ask those around you what evidence of grace do you see in my life? Again? This is why we have community, because we cannot afford to get this answer wrong. Alright? So we’ve gotten two exhortations so far. Practice the word, prepare your life. Then lastly, pray and proclaim. Pray and proclaim verses 16 to 21 may read it for us. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright morning star, the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. Let the one who is thirsty come, and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this scroll, he who testifies to these things says, Yes, I am coming soon. Amen, come Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen. It’s interesting that revelation is book ended by statements about the chain of Revelation, like how we got this information. It is how we get God’s testimony. You know, in chapter one, it says that God gives it to Jesus. Here we begin with Jesus, but Jesus gives it to his angel, a messenger. The the angel gives it to John, and then John writes it down for us. The good news, though, is that we get what we need to get, so that we know what we need to know. Most especially we need to know who Jesus is and what he’s done for us. So He is the root and offspring of David. So the root, he is the one from whom David comes, which is interesting, because, of course, David’s born 1000 years before he is, and so he’s got this divine origin his he’s the Ancient of days, and then he’s also the shoot of David, the branch that grows in David’s tree. So he somehow is both just David’s ancestor and David’s descendant. There’s only one way, of course, that that makes any sense, and that is that if God becomes human, to bring humans back to God, and that is what Jesus does. All this taken from Isaiah 11. He’s also the bright and morning star taken from Numbers 24 the False Prophet Balaam, who speaks a true word about Jesus, this star that will come out of Jacob, out of Israel, who will rule over all and conquer his enemies. That’s the star that we’re talking about. It’s interesting. It’s called the Morning Star, which is Venus, by the way, and it rises in the east just before sunrise. And boy, if that isn’t a picture of what Revelation is trying to tell us when it’s dark, we have this promise. Light is coming and the night is coming to an end. So what do we do with this testimony, though this word that we’ve received, we say come. And did you notice we say come, the Spirit and the bride. It says verse 17, the bride, the Church. So the Church says, Come. Now to whom are we speaking? Are we saying Jesus come, or are we inviting the Lost come? Come and meet Jesus? The answer, of course, is both. I mean, you see John’s prayer in verse 20, amen, come, Lord Jesus, prayer of the Church has always prayed, but right after the Spirit and the bride say, Come. We read this, let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. So we pray that Jesus would come, and then we proclaim that people would come to Jesus, because there’s this immediate invitation to the lost right afterwards, to those who are thirsty, to those who need this free gift, I love that we’re called the bride here too. I think it’s such a wonderful picture, because the the church is inviting the world to meet her husband, beaming like a new bride. You know who, who’s just smitten with her new husband, bursting with pride, but it’s more than just pride. She’s saying this because she knows that her husband actually can help like, imagine a young bride talking to somebody who’s in dire financial straits, going, you gotta talk to my husband. He’s a CPA. He’s really good at what he does, like, he can help you with this. He can help you figure out how to deal with your debt, how to make a budget so that you’re saving and all the rest like that’s what’s happening here. That’s the point. We have what the world needs. The husband that we’re pointing to has what the world needs so desperately. It’s available free of charge. So of course, we say, come, come by all means, come and meet Jesus. Let me ask you this, do you believe that’s true? Do you believe that the people around us are thirsty, need Jesus, and that he can actually help? Them. If the answer to that question is yes, then you will go and share boldly. You will tell people about Jesus, because you know that some people will be so excited to hear that someone can help them by as excited as a person in financial straits. You want to know what this looks like, the relief and joy and hope that people feel like talk to Katie or Carolyn, who run our Christians against poverty debt Center, where they’re talk to people who are burdened with debt, show them that there’s a way out. They are grateful for the information, and many of the people we talk to will be grateful for the information that there is salvation in Christ, Jesus, that there is hope and love and joy and peace. And you know what? Some will be annoyed. They will in the same way that you could talk to some people about finances, and they would go, mind your own business. I don’t need your help. And you go, you got $130,000 worth of credit card debt, you sure? But they’ll be annoyed. And you go, Okay, I’m here when you need me, I’ll be so happy to talk to you about this. Again, this is why we we’ve been pushing this whole invite your one idea. And again, I just talked about this in the pulse. I mentioned a number of people that we’ve invited to the Easter service, just personally, I’ve not had anyone angry with me, annoyed that I asked, and I had a lot of people who were really joyful, like most people are okay with it. Some are happy about it. I’m so glad you asked. And some have that desperate joy because they know this is what they need. By the way, if you’re questioning Christianity, still seeking, still skeptical. I mean, just know the invitation is you right now, like, come, come. This is what you need, and is available to you in Christ, Jesus. Here’s the thing, if this invitation, which is really the whole story of the Bible, of course, if this invitation is this important, you can understand why we’re told not to tamper with it. We’re not tampering even just with wedding invitations, which would be bad enough somebody misses the big day because, you know, you wrote the wrong words down. No, this would be more like somebody going around and removing all the stop signs in a city or adding in a bunch of unnecessary steps in emergency procedures so that when a fire breaks out, people don’t know what to do because they trying to do too many things, and they’re stuck there, like people who do that would face swift punishments, because they know that other people would get hurt as a result. And that’s true of Scripture too, except people get hurt eternally when we mess with the words of Scripture. So verses 18 and 19 teach the holiness of God’s Word, the holiness of God’s word because the Holy One speaks them. You don’t correct experts. I can’t even imagine what it’d be like to be a doctor, and just have to have all these conversations with people who are like, well, I read on social media that, okay, I got an MD. You should listen to me instead. Okay. Can think of a lot of other areas as well. You’re all like, I’m an expert here. I know what you’re talking about. The All Wise, all knowing, eternal. God doesn’t need your help. He knows what he’s talking about, and that is why God’s Word does not need any editing. God’s Word does not need any updating and does not need any improvements. Like, you know what this looks like? You’re like, seriously. You’re like, 35 you’ve grown up in one place, you’ve got the limited perspective of a single culture. But go ahead, talk to me about eternal truths. I’m sure you know what you’re saying. Like, we just need humility. I’m talking to all of us there something like, I’m not 35 and we’re fine. You’re 65 does that matter in the light of eternity? No. Okay, we can trust someone who’s been there a lot longer. I remember somebody saying once, it’s a little bit like, you know, I’m 40 something. And, you know, talking to my toddler, because I have one and, you know, like, bro, you’re like, 40 years younger than I am, almost to the day I you just need to listen to me here. And that’s a gap of, again, 40 years. Now, multiply that by 40 billion. Like, that’s how God feels about us. Just trust me. Okay, just trust me. Do you do what I say? Trust me here. That’s what God is saying. And yet, we’re all so sorely tempted to edit God’s word. Like, you know, we just need to get the Bible. It needs to get with the times already. Get with the times much better to get with eternity, don’t you think? And so you see this happening all over the place. Not political progressivism, I want to be clear about that, but theological progressivism has done this to Christianity for the last century. Plus, at first it was, you know, the Bible needs to get with the times. It’s full of miracles and people. Understand science. Don’t believe in miracles, so we need to get with the times. You’re going, Well, I mean, there’s a whole lot of evidence for miracles, so maybe we won’t do that. But okay, and today, of course, it’s on the issues of like sex and gender. We just did a whole class on this. There are many cults and false religions too. You don’t want to add to the Word of God, like the Book of Mormon or the Quran, both of which are adding to God’s infallible revelation, or we saw it in Revelation already, where you’ve got the False Prophet, Jezebel, and this is just the person in church who’s like, Oh, I got a word from the Lord. And if your word from the Lord contradicts the word from the Lord, then it’s not the word of Lord. And as we’ve seen, then, of course, the punishment fits the crime. If you’re going to add to God’s word, you’re going to have some plagues added to you’re going to take away from God’s word, you’ll be you’re going to have these rewards taken away from you. It’s this important reminder our place, our place is not to revise God’s word, but to recognize God’s word as God’s Word, to read God’s word and then to respond to God’s Word in worshipful obedience. And then one last time, Jesus promises he’s coming soon, and John says, Amen, the word Amen, which, of course, we use in every language. Now, it’s a Hebrew word. It comes from the root, it’s firm. That’s the idea. It’s firm, and that’s why it gets translated like in the Gospels, Jesus says, Amen, amen, I tell you, and it’ll get translated like, truly, I tell you, like, you can trust me on this one. It’s built on a firm foundation. But what a reminder that we need so often in this life is Jesus really coming soon? It can be hard to remember when you’re standing at the grave of a loved one, when you see the wicked prospering, when your suffering endures, when it looks like the church is on the run and being defeated, or even just when you’re going through a dry spell spiritually, is he really coming? And here’s the good news, friends, and this is a good week to remember it as well. It’s looked like Jesus lost before. Didn’t it look like the whole project had failed when they stuffed him in that tomb? And how’d they feel on Sunday? And that’s it like, that’s us, like we’re living in that Holy Saturday time between, between what Jesus came to do and what Jesus will come to do again, and it can be hard to remember. That’s why the disciples were cowering in fear. But we don’t need to, because we have this promise, and we know that his words are faithful and true. Is he coming? Amen? You betcha, he is. It’s firm. We can trust it. We can build our lives on this promises, firm foundation, and then we get the good news that his grace will be with his people, which is what we’re going to need to keep going through this slew of despond that is so often this world. So Jesus promises in the Great Commission, right, go and make disciples. I’m with you to the end of the age. I will be with you. His presence is enough for our perseverance. Remember when Moses said, Lord, if you don’t go with us, I’m not going and God says, Fine, I’ll go with you. But even then, it’s just this pillar of fire or or cloud that goes before them, and that was good enough for Moses. Do you know how much better we have it? We don’t have a cloud before us. We have the spirit within us. We can go. We can go. Get ready Jesus is coming soon. So live like Jesus is coming soon. Put his Word into practice. Prepare your lives. Pray and proclaim. So as we close, not just today, but the whole series, I just want to give a few brief concluding thoughts, really takeaways like this is what I want you to stuff in your pocket, carry with you for the next weeks and months. As Dennis Johnson said in his commentary on revelation in the last chapter of the book, is, what should this book do to us? That’s the question we want to have as we close revelation. What should this book do to us? Because, remember, this word is meant for us today, not just to know what’s coming then, but so that it changes today for again, big thoughts, but I’ll be brief, and you can kind of figure out what it looks like in your life. Specifically. First of all, what should this book do to us, this book should give us an eternal perspective. We know that right because we now know how the story ends, and knowing how the story ends, seeing that pot put back together again better than it was before, that’s gives us what we need to endure here. Here and now to endure the hard middle I am anti spoiler alerts. My wife is reading a kind of tense book aloud to our children right now for Lent, and she has this nasty habit of reading ahead a few pages so she knows what’s coming. She gets yelled at because I train my children well, okay, so she knows you don’t do that, except with this book. This is the one where we gotta read the end, because we’re not just reading the book. We are living the book. We gotta know how the story ends so that we can keep going. Second, what should this book do in us? It should make us alert and sober, minded to the danger that is around us, because this book has unmasked our enemies. For us, we met the dragon, we met the beast, we met the False Prophet, we met the harlot Babylon. We know how they will tempt us to power and pleasure with lies. And so I’ll give you the image we used before, right when we look at what the world offers, we are not distracted by that billboard with the impossibly beautiful people who are living young and carefree, healthy lives forever. We’re the ones who read the Surgeon General’s warning. This will kill you and will kill you eternally. And we go, good enough. I’m out of here. Okay, so we are alert and sober minded. Third this book should make us salt and light and make us zealous to be salt and light in this world. In the meantime, which looks like living pure lives. We just talked about this today. Of course, we will resist moral compromise. And then second, it looks like us witnessing, boldly proclaiming the word, the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. And then lastly, and this is most important of all, this is the one that keeps all the other ones going. We will worship Him who sits on the throne and the Lamb who is slain, who is at his right side, we have met Jesus in this book over and over and over again, even just today. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, which means he is our Creator, and he is also our consummator. He is the one who will set all things right in the end, he is the root and shoot of David, meaning he is human and divine. He is the Morning Star, the promise that light is coming. He’s the lion from the tribe of Judah. He is the Lamb who was slain for us. He is our soon and coming and conquering king. And he holds the keys to death and hades in his hand. You fix your eyes on Him who is faithful and true, and you follow in his footsteps the life he lived, the love he showed, his willingness to die for others. We don’t die to atone for sin, but we still lay our lives down for the sake of the kingdom. And then you see his resurrection, the fact that it’s all made right in the end, death is not the end of the story. You see all that you follow in those footsteps. You become faithful and true yourselves. So live today and every day like Jesus is coming soon, because he is Amen, absolutely, it’s firm. Amen, come Lord Jesus, let’s pray. Lord, don’t let us forget this word, this book that you have given us to encourage us in the darkness of death, of suffering, of evil and sin. The middle part is hard, but we know the end of the story, and we know the one who wrote the story and who wrote our stories, who’s willing to save us, not because of anything we had done, but only because of what Jesus has done for us, knowing that Lord, we can press on. We can persevere. We can live lives for your glory, for the building up of your kingdom. We can live in light of eternity. So Lord, as we go from here as we leave the book of Revelation behind us, now. Don’t let us walk away from it entirely, but help us take these truths away. Work them into our lives. And our lives are never the same as a result of knowing this truth, and you might receive all the glory as we so willingly obey you and proclaim Your Word to a world in desperate need of us. We ask this in Christ’s name, Amen.