Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Revelation 1:8

record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand. John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.

Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God in his father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, amen, I am Alpha and Omega, The beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.

Let us sing our prayer for illumination.

Healing. That’s what I’ve thought about this past week. When you’re young, you’re confident, usually assured, got the world on a string. As you get older, you realize it’s not quite like that. And I know that as we come together today, we come with various states of mental activity in our heads going through an experience this last week that is different from everyone else to a degree.

I know that each of us have as we confessed before God sinned in various ways this last week. Each of us also have hurt and then disappointed in various ways as well as been joyous and praise God in various ways. We come here today to worship God. That is our first priority. But as a result of worshiping God, we’re healed. It’s indirect healing though. We don’t come seeking our well-being. We come first seeking the kingdom of God, seeking to glorify God, and then God leads us into an enjoyment of him in all things.

We seek first the kingdom. We seek first to come and worship and praise God. Sermons have as their primary objective to worship and praise God and then secondarily to transform our lives and to make us whole and to have us experience the healing of Christ’s grace and mercy through the Holy Spirit.

I want to talk today about Alpha and Omega, God’s servants. That’s the general theme we’re using in these first three chapters of the book of Revelation. God’s servants are to be literate servants. We’re supposed to know language. We’re supposed to be it, read, write, speak well, etc.

Language. I have for various ways, and please don’t think I’m thinking of you individually, but for a lot of reasons these last few weeks, and actually the last couple of years, I’ve meditated more upon this, upon how we really reflect our parents in many ways. And, you know, you don’t really think about that much when you’re young. I didn’t, but the older I get, the more I see that many of my parents’ attributes or failings or strengths are reflected in me as well. And it can be very disappointing because you want to see culture making progress. You want to see yourself making progress from your parents. And sometimes it seems like you’ve operated in the context of parental patterns unknowingly for years. And you wonder, well, how does God work through this?

Well, couple of ways. One is through marriage. This is one of the values of marriage. Different lineage from different families come together and everything’s changed. Everything’s confronted with the patterns of the other group. But the major way I think that progress happens is the word of God invades our life. If it was not for God’s word, God’s A and Z, God’s alphabet, God’s printed revelation here in front of us, we would be doomed for the most part I believe to repeat the sins and errors of our ancestors.

But God says, “No, it’s not going to work that way because I have invaded, as it were, your particular human history, certainly the coming of Christ to affect salvation for eventually all the world. But he’s invaded your personal history as well. And he gives you the ability to discern through his word that patterns that you might have thought were correct based upon your family’s patterns aren’t in concert with this word.” And this word says, “This is the way; walk you in it.”

And so a knowledge of God’s word is absolutely critical not just to be good Christians in some abstract sense but to live out your lives with a degree of wholeness and a degree of obedience to the word of God. If people are willing—if God’s spirit has made you willing to come to this word and to be confronted by it and to reform your lives on the basis of it—there is much hope for you. But if this word is somehow irrelevant to your life then you know doesn’t do any good to be here. It doesn’t do me any good if I’m not going to listen to this word and have it reform me.

Well, that’s probably pretty obvious stuff. But I wanted to make that point at the beginning of this to say that this has a direct relation. We ought to praise God for what he reveals in himself. And we understand that indirectly God will heal our lives and the patterns of our lives that we set up that are sinful. Whether they’re our own or our parents’, whatever, our cultures that are sinful patterns, God invades them, breaks them down, and makes new patterns by means of this word, this revelation of who Christ is.

Now we’ve said that this final book in God’s revelation called Revelation—it means it’s a making clear, it’s an uncovering of something that was covered or mysterious before. It is a revealing, and it is a tremendous indictment of our Christian culture that for most people this book remains a closed book. They have no idea what it’s talking about because it says at the beginning this is supposed to be easy—maybe not easy but it’s supposed to be clear. Why isn’t it clear? We’ve said that one of the reasons why it is not clear to us is because we do not know our Bibles.

It’s using biblical imagery. It is signified, signed, using imagery that we are not free autonomously to say, “Well, we think it means this.” We’ve got to let the word interpret itself. And last week was an exercise in that—to go back and look at what the scriptures have to say about cloud comings. Otherwise, we come to this verse, verse 7, that we looked at last week, and oh, well, Jesus went up in the clouds. It’s neat, those cumulus things up there. He’s going to come back. And that’s no, that’s not the point.

When it says in verse 7 that he comes in the clouds, we see that’s a quotation from the book of Daniel. He ascends in the clouds as he went in the ascension to receive the reign from the father in 30 AD. The book, the Revelation again, the words by which he will rule as king of kings now sitting at the right hand of the father.

And that means various class comings will occur. Jesus will descend and does descend at various times in the history of the world in special manifestations of his rule. He comes in a little portable throne room. He comes with angels all about him. Those angels are fire. Flashes go out as it were. Judgments occur in the world. He’s going to rip down certain people. He is going to save and redeem his people. This portable throne comes and he does it all in relationship to this printed word. This is his revelation of his law.

Now, see, if I would have just said that a couple of weeks ago, you’d know, “Oh, that’s kind of interesting, but to me, I think it’s just clouds.” No. I tried to say this is what the scriptures teach. You see, if you want this word to be clear, if you want to receive the seven blessings that are promised throughout this book, then you have to know your Bible. And if you’re going to know your Bible, you’ve got to suffer through some study of what that word says. Okay?

So it’s a pattern. We’re trying to set up a pattern here. When you read your Bible, you study the whole Bible. I was talking to Carrie. She mentioned to me a couple weeks ago at a retreat. She’s read her Bible six times through. Each time this last six years, she’s read her Bible through. That’s what you need to be doing. It’s not just some sort of “if you do this, God will bless you.” God blesses you as you read it because you get familiar with biblical language.

I praise God that, you know, there’s a lot of the Psalms now that I’m pretty familiar with just through selecting them, thinking about him of course, but just through the worship of the church each Lord’s day.

So it’s a revelation of Jesus Christ. As we approach verse 8, we want to think about it that way—that it’s a revelation of, a making clear of, who Christ is. And it’s a revelation to servants. We are exalted servants of Christ. And so we come to this word, this verse 8, as exalted servants who want to know what it means.

Let me say at the outset that in verse 8, where Jesus says that he’s Alpha and Omega, we have the first usage of that title. Now that title has become quite prominent in the church for 2,000 years. Much of the art of the church has involved the symbolic depiction of the Greek letters alpha and omega as a picture of Christ. So the church knew that this was important. It built it into its architecture. For 2,000 years we have been the recipients of pictures and symbols that represent the verbal manifestation of who Christ is as letters.

And another form of this is the fish. We think of the fish sign that we see on the back of cars. And you might think, well, fish, you know, it’s kind of a picture because Jesus gave fish to his disciples. They were fishermen. But that’s not the point at all. The visual representation of a fish was to represent the Greek letters that spell that word out, which is an acronym referring to Jesus Christ. Ichthus. You’ve heard that, of course.

Well, that Greek word is the Greek words for Jesus. That’s the I in Ichthus. Christ. The ch sound in Ichthus. God’s the th sign in Ichthus. Son Savior. Okay. So Jesus Christ, God’s son savior is what Ichthus was—an acrostic or an acronym where each individual letter represents something in this phrase to spell out this title of Jesus Christ, and that became pictured in a symbol.

We have come to a culture that is icon-based as opposed to word-based. More and more our computers are becoming, for instance, icon-based. And well, I’m not saying that’s all wrong. I am saying that it’s very important that we as a church individually and corporately understand what’s behind these pictures or symbols is the written word. And what’s behind these tremendous pictures or symbols in Revelation is the written word interpreting them for us.

Okay, so that’s where we’re going. We’re going to stress Alpha and Omega, but there’s other things in the verse besides Alpha and Omega. In verse 8 we read the following: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.” Now, I’m not going to talk about that too much today because there is not good manuscript evidence for that part of it. Don’t worry about it. But basically what we have is “I am Alpha and Omega, saith the Lord God”—a better translation, better manuscript evidence—”which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty.”

Okay. So what we have here is Jesus identifying himself as Alpha and Omega and then these other terms are used as well. The Lord God, is, was, and is to come—which we saw was a name earlier in our studies—and the Almighty. So we want to talk a little bit first about those three titles of Jesus and then we’ll talk specifically about Alpha and Omega.

Okay. So on your outline, point one: we want to say first of all that the Son—you know, behind that word Alpha and Omega—he’s identifying himself as Alpha and Omega. “In the beginning was the Word—logos”—that’s not logic and abstract mental reasoning. It is word. In John 1:1, Jesus is the word, and he is the Alpha and Omega. The individual alphabetic letters is what Alpha and Omega refers to, and the word is a combination of letters in terms of language. So Jesus the Son, I assert, is the speaker in verse 8.

Who’s speaking? Well, you don’t necessarily know. You might think it’s the Father because these other titles are used. But if you turn—there are two other places where this is used, and as I show you on the outline, in Revelation 2:16, it is connected to “the beginning and the end.” And in 22:13, it’s connected to “the first and the last, the beginning and the end,” so those concepts are involved in Alpha and Omega, but it’s not restricted to that.

But if you turn to chapter 22:13, I’ll show you very definitive evidence, I think, as to why we can assert that this is indeed Jesus who is speaking here in verse 8.

Okay. In Revelation 22, actually beginning at verse 12: “Behold, I am coming quickly. My reward is with me to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and 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 enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices lying”—very important for our discussion in a minute, lying. “I Jesus have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.”

So Jesus identifies himself explicitly here. Now we don’t need it because we know that it’s Jesus who comes in the clouds. He said he would in the gospel accounts. So the point of that is that I want you to see first of all that verse 8 is being spoken by Jesus. It is Jesus Christ who says these things.

The Isaiah 41 references say that this “beginning and the end” concept is in the Old Testament although nowhere in the Old Testament is “alpha” and “tav” put as a name for God. But “the beginning and the end” is in Isaiah 41:4.

So first of all, verse 8 is about Jesus—verse 8 is spoken by Jesus. The second person of the Trinity. Secondly, the Son is identified with the Father in this verse after the Son’s ascension. I hope this isn’t too complicated, but see what he does: he says “I am Alpha and Omega.” And then he uses three terms that we would normally associate, and were associated—one of them was associated earlier with the Father. He says “I am the Lord all Lord God,” and he says “I am he who is, was, and is to come”—the name that we saw earlier in this book—and “I am the Almighty.”

Remember, we said that in verse 4—in verses 4 and 5—we have the picture of the Trinity. The message comes from Father identified as Yahweh or “I am he who is, was, and is to come,” and then from the seven spirits and also from Jesus Christ. Okay.

So what I want you to see here is that Jesus identifies to himself terms that at least one term, and other terms that are frequently identified with the Father. Okay? And this verse 8, in which Jesus draws this identification, his unity with the Father, is inserted in the text after the assurance of his having received the power, the reign from God the Father at his ascension.

Remember we said that verse 7 conflates Daniel and Zechariah, and it’s about Jesus’s ascension in AD 30. It’s also about the churches receiving reign in AD 70. But in the first application, it’s Jesus receiving reign that he will administer judgment in the earth. But the primary principle in the New Testament is not wrath but grace because people are going to repent. The point is that after this description of Christ’s ascension, then we have this statement asserting to himself these terms, identifying himself with the Father.

Now, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t equal with the Father before his ascension, but it does mean that upon his ascension, things change in human history and he receives this reign and begins to exercise that reign in a fuller, more manifest sense. Okay.

Now, it is interesting as well if we look at Revelation 11, if you could turn there, verse 15: “The seventh angel sounded, and there arose loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and will reign, and he will reign forever and ever.’ And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, ‘We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who wast and who was because thou hast taken thy great power and hast begun to reign, and the nations were enraged, and thy wrath came,’ etc., etc.”

So you see here again that upon the ascension of the Savior and the manifestation of that through judgment, the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. He’ll reign forever. And then they sing out, “We give thee thanks, O Lord God”—same phrase—”the Almighty”—same phrase—”who art and who was”—shortened form of “is was and is to come,” because now he has come and his judgments are made manifest.

So the same thing—there’s a connection between the attribution of these three titles to Jesus and his ascension to the right hand of the Father. A simple point, but I think it’s important to note as we want to know what the text says to us. Okay?

Third, we want to say that the Son’s word Alpha and Omega has titles which correlate with Old Testament history. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, but it is again worth noting that the term “Lord God” could be Adonai Yahweh or Adonai Elohim in the Hebrew. It refers generally to the Davidic period. This was a title, the use of God’s name was used primarily in the kingdom portion of Old Testament history in the Davidic period.

The word Yahweh, of course, we know was the name that God gave to Moses, and that has to do with the Mosaic period, emphasizing the priestly reign of God, his covenant reign. And then finally, the word Almighty would be the Old Testament word, the Hebrew word Shaddai, meaning “full of might” or “power.” And this was the common terminology in terms of God during the patriarchal period, which was the prophetic period.

So there’s a correlation here in the names of Jesus to Old Testament history. Now, those first three points deal with the rest of what’s said here apart from Alpha and Omega.

It is probably important for us to take just a moment and think about that a little bit. Because what we’ve done in this is to draw into this the ascription of these titles to Jesus, but we’ve also drawn in through the other two references in Revelation that Alpha and Omega is connected—now it’s not in the text here but in terms of the other two texts it is connected to—Jesus being the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Okay.

So Alpha and Omega, A and Z. Part of that, we want to think about, is that Jesus is the beginning and the end. Jesus is the agent of creation of course, but Jesus is also the end or culmination of creation. All of creation eventually will reflect the praise and manifestation of Jesus Christ.

Now this is certainly true of God’s primary image-bearers, people. I went to hear some music at the zoo Thursday night. Paul Delay band, really entertaining group. And last week I went to the Multnomah County Fair at Oaks Park, and I loved doing little booths and stuff. I always like these fairs and these booths, and I go to those booths and it’s a fun time. You got rides for the kids. Fun time. And I went to the coast on Tuesday. Chris and I went over there to celebrate her birthday. Had dinner out a couple of times at wonderful restaurant called Rosano’s in Oceanside and had tremendous food, and I greatly enjoyed all these events.

But every event I thought about this fact: that Jesus is the beginning and the end. And I know that I may not see it and my children may not see it, but I know that somehow the descendants of the people of this church and the church of Jesus Christ in general will see a time come in this culture when the wonderful music that Paul Delay and his band play and sing will be more manifestly in terms of praise to God and more informed by a Christian worldview as they sing forth their music.

And I know that county fairs in the future will someday reflect the glory due to Jesus Christ at these booths. Now, they don’t have to necessarily—you don’t want to just make think of this as stamping “Jesus is Lord” on a pencil and someone making the pencil better—but I’m talking about how most people today their worldview is not informed based on the scriptures, and what they produce then may have excellence and a degree of enjoyment to it. But think of the day when it will be fully manifest, when the goal of history, the manifestation of Christ through his image-bearers, takes place in county fairs, and when everybody there is operating for the glory of God and the rides are going that way and the booths are doing so for the purpose of that ultimately glorifying God through excellence in animal husbandry or whatever it is.

And think of the day when you go out to eat. You won’t be the only one who stops and prays for your food aloud before you eat it. When the whole restaurant is—that would be normal activity. Well, I have reason to believe that because these scriptures tell me that Jesus started all this. But Jesus is the culmination of this as well. Jesus pushes his image, his attributes into you through worship and through his word and into us by the Spirit. That’s what the Spirit does. And you as the church bring the manifestation of the Spirit and God’s word to the culture and push Christ’s attributes into the culture. And eventually the culture will be converted and discipled as a whole, and we’ll see this great culmination that Jesus is the finisher, the author and finisher of our faith.

You see, there’s a community aspect to that. There’s a worldwide global aspect.

Now, it’s also true of you individually. And it’s worth stopping here for just a moment to assure you: no matter what difficulties you may have encountered this last week, and maybe what discouragements or depressions struggling against personal sin and seeming to have lost that—as you continue to profess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus began that faith in you and he will bring it to maturity. This text is directly related to the fifth head of doctrine of the Canons of Dort—perseverance—and that God assures you that he will preserve you and you will persevere in the faith. Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. You’re going to be finished. Don’t worry about it. You’re a work in progress, but you will be finished, you see?

So there’s a great rest we should have in this Lord’s day. We should praise God’s name that the culture will manifest him and we will manifest him increasingly. And in spite of your discouragement, you should praise God’s name that he is going to finish you as well as having begun the work in you.

And let me just mention something for the parents here. I know that one of the tremendous burdens of being a parent is concern—godly concern for your children. How are they going to turn out? And it can be real discouragement about that. Rest in the knowledge that God is the author and finisher of their faith. It’s not up to you ultimately to finish them. That’s God’s work, you see.

How is it up to us to be diligent as part of the secondary means. But if you have no assurance that God, who began the work in your child, will bring it to perfection, you’ll become increasingly immobilized as parents, and you will actually work contrary to the very end you want for your children through a sinful anxiety and worry and a failure to recognize that Jesus is the author and finisher of their faith as well.

So these verses bring tremendous comfort to us in terms of the community aspect, personally, the ones that we love, and so much. Jesus is the author and finisher, and he has now ascended, and there’s a heightened sense in which he now brings to pass his tremendous might. He is Almighty. He is the Lord God, King of all kings in the kingly period. You see, he rules governors, officials, magistrates, any other civil official. He’s the king of all kings, and he has all power and might. And he is the covenant God of you. And this is Jesus. Okay, so those three things are true.

And the last four points of the outline—I didn’t really plan it this way, but it is a nice three and four. Three days of creation, four days, seven. If you don’t know what I mean, forget it. But if you do, delight in it, that God does these things. Okay.

So the fourth point and the last four points really are about the term Alpha and Omega. That Jesus is not simply—it doesn’t just mean he’s the beginning and the end, the first and the last. It says he is Alpha and Omega. It says he is these Greek letters. Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it?

Let’s think about that for a little bit. First of all, we can say from this that language is strongly associated with God. As I said, we don’t need this. We have John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word”—language. That’s what it means. Logos is word. It’s not logic ultimately. But this is very, even much more clear, isn’t it? Because this uses the actual individual letters of the Greek alphabet. The first and last letter of the Greek alphabet. And this tells us very significantly that God is linked—language is strongly associated with God.

Now I’ve given you some references there of the acrostic nature of certain passages from the Old Testament, and we just recited one as well. The other handout you received—if you picked one up—this thing here, five pages. This is from the Knox translation of the Bible. It’s not John Knox. It’s actually a Catholic translation. So I’m not recommending it. But in this particular translation, what they did with these acrostic Psalms—these Psalms that begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet going consecutively through all 22 letters—they translated it that way.

Now, you know, there’s 26 letters in the English alphabet and only 22 in the Hebrew. So they leave out certain letters. But that’s why I gave you this just something to have in your files if you want to go home and look at with your kids or something. But we won’t go through these. But I wanted to show you visually here what this means when we say that God is involved in the alphabetic structure in terms of his revelation of who he is.

Language is highly associated with God. He wants you to know language. Every father is supposed to write God’s word for his children. Yeah. That’s what Deuteronomy 6 implies. Talks about that these things will be written. So literacy is not some kind of new phenomena. Literacy was beginning with God’s people. He gave them language, the ability to have language and to write. And so there’s various verses I could point to, but the point is that literacy is common.

And God associates his revelation of who he is with the alphabet here in Alpha and Omega, but also in these Psalms as well, with these acrostic things. Lamentations—the first four chapters have every chapter that follows this acrostic structure. Now we noted in Psalm 119 that it’s a little bit different. There’s a series of eight stanzas where each of the eight stanzas begin with the next Hebrew letter, aleph. And so eight lines in Psalm 119. I don’t have them for you on this. Was there or do I? No, I don’t. Too long. But so eight lines and then eight lines and then eight lines, and that tells you how many verses are in Psalm 119, doesn’t it? It’s 22 times 8. See, if it’s—you know, if we do the versification correct because it follows that structure.

Lamentations, in one of these sections of Lamentations—the first four chapters are given for you in the last couple of pages there. And you’ll see it goes through this same thing. And then chapter 3, they actually give three verses for each letter. Okay? Aleph, aleph, aleph, beth, beth, beth, etc., in this translation. A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, C. Get it? So that’s interesting. And then the fifth chapter of Lamentations, the final chapter, breaks this pattern. This alphabet of judgment from God and lamentation. And in a way, commentators have seen that as it moves away from that pattern. I didn’t give you the fifth chapter, but the fifth chapter doesn’t have that structure.

So it’s like the total alphabet of God’s judgment is broken to show that there’s mercy coming through the judgment as well. Okay. So it’s like a hammering home of various themes.

Proverbs 31, you know, the section reading at verse 10 that talks about the church, lady Wisdom. And yes, it talks about you women as well. But don’t feel guilty that you don’t have all those attributes because ultimately it’s talking about lady Wisdom as opposed to the harlot fool described for us in the book of Revelation. It’s the church ultimately, I think, that’s being pictured there. But of course it has strong application for wives and women as well. But there as well that’s an acrostic structure, you know, through the Hebrew alphabet.

So language is very much associated with God. Jesus is the Word. Jesus is Alpha and Omega.

Uh, we can say that language then is declared here. Language, letters, words, language to be an attribute of God. God is language, and then God is A’s and B’s, and God is words. Okay? So it’s an attribute of God.

In worship, when we worship God, we worship him not with pictures. We worship him with words. The second commandment forbids human art from being worshiped or becoming a means of worship of God, you see. And we can’t worship by way of picture or symbol. We worship by way of word. In the book of Revelation, what’s the false worship described as? It’s a worship of the image or picture of the beast. Do you see the difference?

We worship, we’re people of the book. We’re people of the word because God has said that it is integral to who he is to reveal himself by way of language. And so we want to worship him the way he has instructed us to worship him, which is by way of language in a literary way.

Now we have in your outline as well as giving you the references—I’ve sort of done little synopses of those portions of scripture that are alphabetic and what they mean, what the general summation is.

Psalm 1, by the way, I have it on your outline, but it is not acrostic fully. Psalm 1, which begins the Psalter. The first word is “blessed” and it begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The last word of Psalm 1 is “perish,” and it begins with Tav, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That’s why it’s here. Beginning and end, A to Z. It’s a picture of life as God portrays it. God’s word. And the two paths are given for us in those Psalms.

There’s an alphabet of judgment in Lamentations 1-4. An alphabet of praise for God’s judgment in Psalm 34. An alphabet of Lady Wisdom’s attributes in Proverbs 31. We have an alphabet of intercession for perseverance and tribulation in Psalm 25. There’s an alphabet of praise for God’s attributes and actions in Psalms 111 and 145. I’m just reading off the outline here, easy to follow. And then Psalm 112 is an alphabet of blessings for faithful saints.

Now, did that sound familiar with you as I’ve described the last month or so the content of the book of Revelation? Well, see, all these things are really very key elements within the book of Revelation. God’s judgments, perseverance, blessings to God, intercession for God, the attributes of lady Wisdom, the true church, the true bride as opposed to the harlot. There’s a real connection here between these acrostic Psalms and portions of Old Testament scripture to Jesus being Alpha and Omega.

Which he brings in—see in verse 8, when Jesus says “I’m Alpha and Omega,” I’m letters, immediately our association should be to the letter portions of the Old Testament, and we bring those into and it helps us to understand what the Revelation is going to be about. But in terms of our primary consideration, it helps us to understand who Jesus is: Jesus’s word. Jesus’s alphabet. Literature is very important in terms of God.

Read a quote from Jim B. Jordan his commentary on Revelation: “Thus God’s word embraces all reality and all history. The alphabet of God’s existence is the standard by which we are judged and by which we live and find joy. The alphabet of God’s existence. Jesus is the standard. We’re going to talk about that in a couple of weeks. The standard for us as servants. But he describes himself here in terms of alphabetic terms. It is the standard for his bride, Proverbs 31. It’s the vocabulary of his praise. It is the description of his blessings, which are as wide as the alphabet of God’s totality. And in Psalm 25, God’s alphabet of totality is something we can call upon in time of need.

“God’s alphabetic attribute is his sovereign rule. The Father has given this alphabet to the Son. It is the book that the Son receives from the Father. Thus it is the Son who is here called Alpha and Omega. He was the Almighty, the I Am, and the Lord God in the old creation. He now is the alphabet of all human life and of all human existence.”

You see, he takes that book, which is this book of the scriptures, by which he rules. So literature is important. Literary association with God.

Next thing I have in the outline is that language is essential to man’s image-bearer. If we can see in these alphabetic portions—and actually all of the scriptures are of course alphabetic—if we can see then that it’s important to the manifestation of God’s revelation of who he is, and if we’re God’s primary image-bearer, which we are, then it’s important to us.

You know why? Why is it that we’re different from all the animals? Is it because of this thumb that monkeys don’t? No, it’s not. Not it. It’s because we have speech. It’s because we can read and write. No other animal. No other created being except the angels can do that. You see, that’s what makes us human in one sense—language itself. We’re made in the image of God, and we’re made with language as part of our attribute.

And so language is central to us being image-bearers.

Now, if that’s true, and I think that logically follows, then the next statement also logically follows. What I have here is a description of our image-bearing-ness of God that we talked about from the Canons of Dort series in terms of man’s creation. We said that man is created in righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion. And we added a fifth thing that’s not commonly added: community, because we read in Genesis that “in male and female created he them,” while speaking of us as image-bearers of God.

So if our image-bearing has to do with righteousness, holiness, knowledge, dominion, and community, then we can say that language is absolutely critical to righteousness, knowledge, holiness, community, and dominion. Okay? You see what I’m saying? We’re image-bearers. We’re image-bearers in terms of these things. And by way of these things, we bear image to God. And if we are literate and if we know words and language, we will be more successful, as it were, in exercising dominion and improving community.

And to the degree we aren’t, we’re going to have problems.

Another quote from Jim Jordan: “Thus by taking the name Alpha and Omega, God says that he is the fountain of all language. Apart from God, men grow silent, and language declines.”

There’s a Pink Floyd song. Sorry for making reference to that group, but if you don’t like them, but there’s a Pink Floyd song. I don’t remember the name of it now, but it’s about the inability to communicate. In a way, it’s about what they see as man’s first attempt at speech in the cave. But it’s also about modern man’s inability to communicate to his wife. And the wife is—the female refrain is “Why won’t you speak?” And “I can’t speak. You know, I can’t think of anything.” And men have problems with communication, and husband-wife relationships.

If they do not mature in a godly fashion, they mature by an absence of language the older they get. Until you get people—you get the classic story of couples becoming divorced after the kids leave home. There’s nothing to talk about anymore. They sit there silent with each other. That’s hell because we’re to exercise the image of God in language.

Now, I know too much speech is not good either, but the point is that the absence of speech, silence, absolute silence between husband and wife is a picture of hell. Husbands, if you don’t leave this sermon—all this stuff maybe sound weird to you, but all you got to know is when you leave this sermon today, praise God that he gave you speech and use it with your wives. Use it with your wives.

Reading on from Reverend Jordan’s quotation: “In hell no one speaks. Christian cultures are literary. Literacy speaks, rather spreads, to the entire culture. Books are written and published. Language increases in expressiveness. People learn other languages as part of their basic education.”

You see, it’s central to our image-bearing as dominion men, and it’s central to our image-bearing in terms of culture or community rather—community. Okay.

So seventh, then—last point: God’s servants are to be literate servants. What do we do with all this interesting stuff? Alpha and Omega, all these acrostics—didn’t know that before. So what does it mean to us? What it means to you is that if you want to train your children to exercise dominion, they’ve got to learn to read and they’ve got to learn to write. And I suppose arithmetic is an extension of language as well in terms of naming of numbers. But reading should be absolutely critical to home Christian homeschooling.

If we see today in our culture the attack on language through rejection of phonics, for instance, through what’s called deconstruction in language, through the kind of inattention to spelling errors that’s so frequent in the public schools. All these attacks on language make sense because the culture moves away from Christ. It moves away from valuing language.

Well, see, the winds of our culture blow at our doors every day, and you open the door up and it comes in. So we want to buttress ourselves against that by seeing how important language and literacy is based upon Jesus identifying himself as Alpha and Omega. You want to know the alphabet; otherwise you can’t know Christ. That’s kind of what it comes down to.

In Plymouth Colony, if you didn’t teach your children to read, they would find you. See, we’re into this libertarian notion. “The state has nothing to do with education.” Well, I think it’s basically true. But in Plymouth Colony, where they explicitly taught—tried to teach—their civil magistrates to do God’s will. You didn’t teach them to read, they’d find you. They’d find you again. Then they’d take the child away eventually. Third time, take them away, put them with a family and teach them to read because he needs to read this Scripture.

That’s number one. Why are you learning to read, children? Parents, why are you teaching your kids to read? If it’s for a job, that’s wrong. I mean, that’s a good secondary reason to learn to read. But first of all it’s to understand, to have made clear to you, who Jesus is by reading this Revelation and by reading the scriptures.

I went to Multnomah School of the Bible years ago in a class that was supposed to teach how to interpret Scripture. The guy had to spend most of the time—I don’t remember if it was a quarter or a semester what it was—most of the time he had to go back and teach them basic English because the schools weren’t teaching it.

If your children cannot understand how to diagram sentences—now, maybe not the specific method of diagram, but if they can’t figure how to parse a sentence into its parts, how are they going to understand what they read? They may be able to pronounce each word, but if they don’t know English grammar, they’re not going to be able to understand what the word means. And if you don’t understand English grammar, you’re going to misinterpret the Bible. You see, language is critical to the exercise of dominion, understanding Christ, and communicating Christ to our culture. Language is critical.

Secondly, as I said, language is critical to the exercise of proper community. Our tongues are ministries—can be ministries of grace one to the other.

Let’s just go over briefly here as I close a couple several verses on speech.

Let me say, by the way, one way of kind of summarizing these last two points—and I could speak to righteousness, holiness, and knowledge—I’m restricting myself to the application of literacy and language, and Jesus being Alpha and Omega, to dominion and community because that’s kind of where it starts.

One way of thinking about this is there are two lies that are commonly told in our culture. One is a Christian lie. And it says that “I’m going to witness to Jesus just by the way I live my life. I’m going to live my life differently, and I’m not going to talk to the coworker or my friend or relative using words about Jesus or the scriptures. I’m going to live differently. That’s my witness.”

Now, there’s a grain of truth to that. Of course, I mean, your witness is how you live out your life. But it’s a lie because God wants you to communicate in terms of literary devices, language, as part of your witness. The witness that Christ is talking about in Revelation 1, that we’re called to be faithful servants in maintaining, is a verbal witness to all men that Christ is King and his law rules, and it’s to bring the culture into judgment on the basis of their disobedience to this rule of law that Christ has instituted. That’s the witness. It’s verbal. And if we think we can exercise dominion just by being good people without verbal witness, we’re wrong. The scriptures say otherwise.

And the second lie: “Sticks and stones hurt my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Again, there’s an element of truth to that. If you shoot me, I’m going to be dead. And if you use words to strike me, I won’t be physically dead. But it’s wrong in saying that words won’t hurt you. The scriptures say over and over and over how important words are to either minister grace or hurt people.

Words, being the expression of our being created in the image of God, have tremendous power. An animal can stomp somebody to death. But your words can either bring great blessing to the people you live with and the people you have fellowship with and to the world, or your words can bring great hurt. The devil is the father of lies. That’s how he’s identified. And the devil is a slanderer—by means of words. That’s how he’s identified.

You see, the opposition to Christ uses wrong words. So your words are quite important. Words can and do hurt you more than sticks and stones. Sticks and stones—the hurt that they cause can be healed quite easily. Hurt caused by words, much more difficult to heal. Hurt caused by years of no words between husband and wife can cause tremendous damage that is very difficult to heal.

But praise God, God’s in the healing business. And as we praise him for who he is today, he heals us and he brings us to a wholeness of language as well. Okay.

Dominion. Now, let’s look at some words then in terms of the use of language in terms of community. And you know most of these: Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man.” Your words—you should always be thinking about your words.