Dennis Tuuri

Revelation 1:9-11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Revelation 1, beginning at verse 9.

“I John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. And what thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”

We thank God for his word. And we pray now that he would illuminate our understanding. We pray through song.

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Why did you come here today? Ask yourself that question. What do we do on the Lord’s day? What is it all about? What is the worship of the church? Why specifically are you here?

Well, I hope that by looking over these particular verses from Revelation 1, we’ll have our minds transformed a bit to understand a little better what worship is all about and its relationship to our being servants of God.

Our theme for these first three chapters of Revelation—this set of sermons going through them—has been that of servants. We’re exalted servants certainly, but we serve the Lord Jesus Christ. We are his slaves or servants. We do so literally, we do so perseveringly, and we do so in obedience to his word. And today we want to talk about the relationship of that service—that servanthood that we serve in—to the worship of the church.

I want to do this by going through a series of seven observations on this particular text. Let me just say first of all, by way of textual correction, this will become important as we go through these in a little more detail, but I’ll just note them now.

In verse 9, if you’ll look at the first verse there that we read, I don’t know what it says in your version, but I read the King James version. And I want to make a couple of points here of articulation on what’s in the text and what isn’t. Let me just mention that the book of Revelation is the most troublesome text in the New Testament textually speaking. In other words, it has the most problems that people have tried to figure out—what is the original text in this particular book.

Without getting into a lot of detail, there’s a historical reason for that. But in any event, there are problems in the text that you have to look at as you go through it in any text of scripture—what the manuscripts say was the original wording, and particularly so in the book of Revelation.

Let me just note a couple of places as examples of this. In the very first verse, in verse 9, “I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation”—the King James says—”and in the kingdom and tribulations of Jesus Christ.” The two predominant Greek texts used both put a definite article in front of tribulation. So we should read it instead of the King James version saying “companion in tribulation,” we should read it “companion in the tribulation.”

Now there’s a difference between the Received Text and the Nestle version—Nestle being the common text used today—in whether there’s a definite article before “kingdom.” So you might or might not read a definite article there, but you would want to have one before tribulation. It’s interesting how the King James puts it in front of kingdom but not in front of tribulation. So the text really should read: “I John, who also am your brother and companion in the tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.”

Now in verse 10, there’s a definite article inserted in the King James version that isn’t in the Greek version, and that is “the” in front of “the spirit.” The text actually says “I was in spirit.” Now you may or may not think the definite article belongs there. And it wasn’t in the Greek text, but that doesn’t mean anything necessarily. It could be implied that this is “the spirit” or it might not be. It’s an interpretive question, but you could read it, “I was in spirit on the Lord’s day.”

And then finally, in verse 11, when the voice says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,” that is almost assuredly not in the original manuscript. So we will treat it as not being in the text, that particular portion. We don’t lose anything. We’ve seen where those articulations of the name of Christ are made in other places in the text in the book of Revelation, but not here.

Okay. So having made those textual criticisms or changes, let’s now look at the observations that I’ve provided you on your outline.

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The first observation I have is that the second signatory to the Revelation provides us with another theme of the book: tribulation, kingdom, and patience. Verse 9 says that “I John, who also am your brother, am in the tribulation, the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.”

Now, we talked last week about the first signatory. Now, maybe that’s not the correct technical term to use, I don’t know. But the point is this: this book is signed in verse 8 by Jesus Christ, in verses 7 and 8. And we talked about that last week. And one of the things we didn’t mention or stress, but what should be stressed, is that when Jesus says, “I am Alpha and Omega,” and then ascribes to himself these three names—the Greek rendering of “Yahweh Almighty” and “Lord God”—he is equating himself with deity. Okay, a very important point to make.

Remember we looked last week, but we can definitely say this is Christ speaking because of the textual reasons we said earlier, and found in the book of Revelation. And this person Jesus—the second person of the Trinity—ascribes to him the same names ascribed to the Father earlier on in this chapter. So he seals his co-deity status with the Father and Spirit in this mechanism. It’s important in terms of a discussion of this as a wonderful text to turn to—this entire book actually—as an exposition of the Trinity and their equality in essence but their difference in function. And that’s really what is important.

I wanted to make this point: the first signatory of the book is the second person of the Trinity, and ascribes to himself terms properly belonging to deity. Okay, so the Trinity is definitely expounded or founded in this text correctly.

Now, when Jesus identified himself, remember we said that he was giving this signing off of who he was at the end of this quotation from Daniel and Zechariah that said, “Persevere, because I am Messiah. I’m the anointed one. I am the ruler of all rulers. I’ve gone to the right hand of the Father. I ascended up and took the reign. I rule, and that rule is going to be manifested through salvation. I am Jesus.”

So I’m Messiah. I’m Christ and I’m Jesus. I’m Christ Jesus. I am Messiah and Savior. And that extension of my reign will be through the vehicle, the preaching of the gospel, and people coming to a discernment of who I am—the elect—and repenting of their sins and believing in me.

So Jesus gave us the theme in this book: “Persevere, because I’m Messiah and I’m Jesus. I’ve saved you. I rule you. I save the world. I rule the world. And so persevere in well-being. It’s going to get tough here in the next few years.”

This is given prior to AD 70. In spite of what some scholars say was written in the ’90s—no, it was written in about 63-64 AD. Times are going to get tough.

Well, in this summation, we can look at this also as a summation of John’s worldview as David Chilton refers to that in his commentary on the book of John’s view of what this book is all about. Because John says at the beginning, as he says, “This is from Jesus and I’m John, the vehicle that Jesus is using to send it to you and I. John am your companion in what? I am your brother and companion in the tribulation, the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.”

Same basic message, isn’t it? The summation message then given by this signer of the book—John—is this theme that this book is about, and the Christian life too by way of application. It’s about tribulation, kingdom, and patience.

Now, it’s interesting. And David Chilton points out in his commentary on this book that these are essentially the three things that are denied by modern-day evangelical dispensationalism—who believe in the pre-tribulation rapture and who believe in once-saved, always-saved, and who believe that the kingdom is not yet attainable or not yet here and present in operation. It was postponed until after the church age.

You see, the view of most Christians today is that the Christians don’t have to go through the tribulation. That they’re going to be raptured out of the tribulation. But John says he’s a companion in the tribulation.

Now, Revelation is John’s eschatological discourse. If you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—Matthew, Mark, and Luke, our Savior gives an eschatological discourse or sermon, whatever, to his disciples. In John, there is none recorded, but here it is. This is kind of like the companion to John’s gospel because it’s the full exposition by our Savior of end things or eschatology.

The point of that is that Matthew, Mark, and Luke talk about this great tribulation that’s going to happen in the context of this generation. So John says, “Hey, I’m there. I’m your companion here in this—the tribulation of tribulations, the very one that most churches today say we’re not going to have to go through.”

So it’s quite different from the modern worldview. And John says that his worldview is not just about tribulation, because he’s not just in tribulation waiting for some future far-off distant kingdom. He says, “I am your brother and companion in the tribulation but also in the kingdom.”

And the book of Revelation is about how there’s great tribulation that would happen to them that’s not going to happen to us. It was the great tribulation of the end of the old creation, as it were—the beginning of the new. But it’s not just about how all this suffering. It’s about the suffering birthing the new church of Jesus Christ and Jesus giving the rule to the saints.

Remember we looked at Daniel chapter 7, and you know it says, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Ancient of Days, and courts were set up, and one like the Son of Man ascending and receiving the rule, receiving dominion and power and strength, etc.” And then he sees this horn making trouble and speaking great things against Jesus. And there’s warfare between the horn and the church—the saints of the most high.

And then a little later in Daniel chapter 7, he says, “And then I saw the kingdom given to the saints of the most high, and they exercise power forever.”

Well, that’s what’s going on between 63 and 70 AD. Jesus has gone up in AD 30. And now this warfare going on—this great tribulation. And then the church in AD 70 is going to be handed the rule definitively at the destruction of the Harlot church, Babylon, Jerusalem, who rejected Christ. And God’s people from then on are going to rule the way angels used to rule in the Old Testament.

So the point is that this tribulation is not the major theme of the book. The major theme of the book is that the tribulation leads to a further manifestation of the kingdom of God. And because that’s what happens, we’re called to persevere.

Now, dispensationalists who reject the idea that we’re going to go through the tribulation—the church did—and who rejected it that the kingdom is now present (which it clearly was in John’s day and is certainly so now) say things like Norman Geisler said that the problem with postmillennialists is they want a Christian America. We don’t want a Christian America. Geisler said, as a typical evangelical (not typical, but as an evangelical dispensationalist), we don’t want a Christian America. We want a free America. You see, we don’t want to have Christian laws. We just want to have good free laws, you know, good democracy like the Greeks wanted. Because he rejects the idea of the present kingdom of God.

Well, this verse is the summation of the book and of John’s worldview. It tells us that we’re in—we’re certainly that the church was in tribulation. We’re going to have tribulation, trials, and things that are going to require perseverance on our part. Then we do so knowing that the kingdom has been manifested and is now in effect in the world. Dominion is possible. The exercise and the increase of dominion is not just possible. It’s a reality and it’s a fact. That’s how history will move. That’s what John understood.

I don’t know what your week was like. I know my week was like. I know my week began—my little five-day work week, look at it that way—began Monday morning with hearing the tying off of a custodial dispute over children. And these children had rejected Christian parents, gone to a pagan father. And my week began with a Kafkaesque hearing in Oregon City where the children are—I guess essentially, I can’t—I don’t understand it now, tell you the truth—but essentially these children are now the permanent wards apparently of this man who is a pervert till my week began.

And then my week ended on Friday by getting the news at the dinner table Friday evening that the governor had vetoed our bill—the homeschool bill—so we’re certainly these things cannot be compared to the great tribulation, but they are trials. And the trials that test our perseverance. And we need to persevere in raising our children for God. We need to persevere. And this family persevered in the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, wrote to their children, to the courts, and they suffered because of that.

We need to persevere. We need to persevere in going to the civil magistrate and saying King Jesus rules, and he would have these kind of laws instead of your laws. Need to persevere in doing that.

And this text tells us that we do that because—if we think it’s all kingdom and no tribulation, we’re wrong. And we’re going to not persevere because we’re going to doubt our faith. And if we think it’s all tribulation and no kingdom, we’re not going to persevere either, because we’re going to say, “What’s the point?” You know, there’s no manifestation. There’s no visible fruit of this.

You see, John knew that to persevere with our children, with the state, whatever it is, and bearing the witness and testimony of Jesus Christ, we needed to understand that tribulation and kingdom are the two poles, as it were, of our life.

My week also more literally ended on Saturday in which I engaged in a sin of uh being too hasty to talk to someone and struggling with you know a particular manifestation of sin in my own life. And in this thing that I did, I also heard another brother who had a day of celebration going on for himself. You know, we struggle with that too.

When the world is discipled—and it will be, the nations are discipled—the tribulation won’t be over, because you and I are going to be like we are today. We’re going to have more external supports for our Christian faith. We’ll be older and wiser. The church will be in another 10,000 years. But we’ll still have sin. We’ll still have the Adamic nature to struggle against. We’ll still have tribulation. But we still will have the same assurance that the kingdom rules—not just in the affairs of the civil polity or the courts or families, but in your life as well—that God forgives us our sins and he works, he uses that sin sinlessly to affect his decree.

So the first observation—and this is really a very important one to make—is that perseverance. My wife’s mother, deceased now for a number of years with the Lord, used to say, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” because she knew that as you get older, the tendency is to weaken and to get discouraged and to give up because the visions aren’t played out.

And this portion of scripture tells us—this entire book tells us—persevere in doing what’s right and being a good Christian in spite of all the difficulties you may encounter, knowing indeed that tribulation is part of God’s mechanism. But tribulation leads to a further manifestation of kingdom.

Okay.

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Second observation: The word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ brings tribulation. John says that he was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Again, without getting into the Greek, there’s an unusual construction in this sentence. And the idea seems to be that the Greek is God is telling us through his use of this particular language that the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ will produce and has produced the tribulation that John is a fellow partaker of. He’s not there just because he did this and then this happened. It’s as if tribulation is directly linked to being faithful in terms of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The point is that these things bring tribulation inevitably. And as I mentioned earlier, this particular couple was the subject of court action Monday morning. In very large degree, part of their tribulation was because they decided to stick to their guns and try to continue with the Christian upbringing of their children in spite of, you know, threats from the children and threats from the civil state, etc.

And you know, we live in odd times. I read a review of a movie by Otto Scott a week or two ago, and Otto said that these times were every bit as bad or worse than the times when Rome was sacked. And very, he mentioned various critical turning points of history. And my family and I are looking at each other like, “What’s he talking about?” You know, we’ve had a pretty nice summer so far. And you know, he’s coming in here and telling us about things not to worship God or anything. “What is he saying?”

Well, the kind of tribulation we’re under is a lot different. You know, I used to with my kids teach Old Testament history. I used to have a drawing of like these two flag holders with flags on them, and one was the United States and the other was the USSR. And underneath them I had—on the USSR side, Nineveh, and on the American side, Babylon—because those are the two tools or secondary means of God to bring chastening to Israel in the Old Testament.

The Ninevites would rule by terror. They’d pile up skulls at the front of the cities they conquer. They’d chop a bunch of heads off, pile them up there, and they’d rule by terror. Like the Gulag in Russia, they’d rule by oppression. They’d beat you until your kidneys broke or something.

But Babylon was a little different. Babylon would indebt people first, and then they would get them to be their servants through indebtedness. And they create a country that they were going to conquer that was demoralized because they were not free people anymore. They were indebted. They were servants. They had a slave mentality.

Babylon is a lot more successful. Well, that’s the kind of culture we live in. The persecution we have is not physical, but it’s much more endemic to our entire culture.

Why is it that virtually everybody knows that churches split, and they split fairly regularly? Is this common in the affairs of the church we have? I don’t think it’s common in the history of the church. I think it’s a sign of something. We have difficulties. We have trials.

Why is it that, as I said earlier, most Christians in our culture—and I believe they’re Christians, are good people who love the Lord—and yet they would completely disagree with John’s characterization of the New Testament worldview given through this mention of kingdom, tribulation, and perseverance, because they also reject, of course, the need for perseverance? Once-saved, always-saved.

Why is it? Well, things are tough, and the culture continues to try to draw us away from perseverance to a Christian lifestyle through a whole bunch of mechanisms. This family was not the active—uh, family who lost these children—they were not the active targets of anti-Christian persecution. They were viewed as idiots or crazy people for believing the Bible really is relevant. You see, and if you quote the Bible and what it says about such things, you’re seen as just kind of—you really believe that stuff? You see, you’re so out of sync with the culture that you’ll be treated, you’ll be marginalized as a group of people.

So Christians have been marginalized. Why? We become marginalized if we assert the testimony of Jesus Christ, it will produce tribulation. And if you say I’m going to raise my children in a Christian way, it’s going to produce problems and difficulties in the context of the culture. And if you tell civil rulers that King Jesus is really their king and they need to submit to him, you are guaranteeing tribulation.

God’s word won’t let the culture just stand still. It invades it. See, it produces tribulation. And this Greek construction of this verse tells us that in some very pointed ways.

Okay.

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Next observation: God’s revelation came to John in spirit on Sunday, the day of evaluation, judgment, and kingdom manifestation. And we quote here, “I was in the spirit,” or “I was in spirit,” on the Lord’s day.

I don’t want to do a Rorschach test. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about—I’ve told some of you that I think that music and movies these days, they’re essentially a mass culture. You got to sell a lot of records, movies, etc. So you got to produce like a Rorschach test that anybody can interpret according to their worldview. You know, “Well, it looks like this to me.” “Well, no, it looks like this to me.”

Let me ask you a couple of things here. When I say that “I was in the spirit,” what comes to your mind? What does that mean? What’s your first response to what that means? Get an image: “I was in the spirit.” And then if I say, “I did something on the Lord’s day.” What’s your response? What? And I throw up that ink blot—Lord’s Day. What do you see it as? The Lord’s day.

Okay. Well, okay, you got that fixed, right? Well, some people, when I say, “I was in the spirit,” they think you were prophesying. They’d think you were going, losing control, and going kind of nutty off by yourself someplace or something, or denouncing people. They think it had a charismatic element to it. Other people would say, “Well, no, boy. When I’m in the spirit, I’m off in the woods, and I’m just really, you know, tracking, and I’m just feeling real good. It’s a feeling and emotional kind of thing.”

Well, other people would say, and I would say—and maybe this is just a Rorschach test on me—but the scriptures tell us that the spirit does particular things. If we want to interpret what it means to be in spirit, we want to let the scriptures tell us that. What does the spirit do?

Well, the first thing: the spirit, he comes to the weak. He comes to the creation, and through a week, he brings order out of disorder, as it were—or a state of non-orderliness. The spirit moves in this seven-pattern. We talked about the seven spirits articulated here in this book. The spirit moves to bring order to disorder. You see, spirit is active in the context of the week.

What does the spirit do? The spirit creates. The spirit’s the matchmaker. Remember we talked about the cannons of door. What does the spirit do? The spirit effectually calls you to God. See, the spirit is in the process of bringing people in assembly to God. They bring you into relationship with God. The spirit’s the matchmaker in scripture who brings the bride to the Son. Who goes off the servant of the Father? He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and he gets that bride and brings her to Jesus Christ. See, that’s what the spirit does.

The spirit produces order. The spirit produces relationship, and the spirit produces assemblies of people around God.

On the Lord’s day, may help you to know when you think about what that means. To me, the mental image, the emotional response that I have to “Lord’s day,” in spite of my knowledge of what the term means—it’s a soft way to say Sabbath. Sabbath is hard. Sabbath is rules or regulations. And “Lord’s day,” yeah, it’s everything’s eased up. I can kind of do what I want to on that day. It’s a lot more—it’s less stress.

Lord’s day, well, it’s kind of soft as opposed to Sabbath. But if I was to tell you that in the Greek, the “Lord’s day” is the same spelling, same Greek words, as the “day of the Lord.” And we can read it, “I was in spirit on the day of the Lord.”

Little different response, isn’t it? Because the “day of the Lord,” if you read your Bible much, you remember the “day of the Lord” and stuff in Joel and those prophets—the minor prophets—and you remember that’s not an easy day. That doesn’t have that soft connotation of “Lord’s day.” That’s got a pretty—that’s even tougher than Sabbath, because it’s like, “Woo, God coming and really, you know, bringing judgment and, you know, fiery fire and lightning, etc.”

See, well, all of this is to say that this revelation is about the spirit’s work in history to mature and bring the bride to Christ, and it’s about convocating together on the Lord’s day. It seems, and you can’t say this definitively, but it certainly seems from this language—as I read it, not based in my Rorschach test emotional response, what the scriptures say about the work of the spirit, and what the day of the Lord is—that John is worshiping on Sunday.

Notice that he says the Lord’s day. That means there was one day out of seven that was different from the rest. Right? I mean, see, it doesn’t help to say, “Well, that Sabbath thing is gone, because now we’re in the Lord’s day.” Because the Lord’s day still says that’s a day. That’s a particular day that John was referring to. See, a day that’s unique from the other six.

It seems rather obvious: it’s the Christian Sabbath. You see?

Well, John on that Christian Sabbath was in spirit. He was in the environment that the Holy Spirit creates, and the focused form of that is the assembly of the church together to worship God. We’re in spirit on Lord’s day. That’s what I believe. We’re in spirit on the day of the Lord.

What was the day of the Lord? Well, the day of the Lord—the first day of the Lord—is when God came to meet with Adam and Eve and to evaluate their works. You remember, that’s why I say here “Adam after John.” There’s a sense in which—there’s a striking imagery given to us in these first few verses of Revelation that remind us of Genesis and the Genesis account.

Let me read Genesis 3:8, and this is more of a literal translation. “And they heard the sound—which means voice—they heard the sound voice of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the spirit. Wind or spirit—same thing. In the spirit of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves in the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.”

Well, here it’s the day. Here he’s in spirit, wind. He’s in spirit. And here the voice of Jesus, the voice of Yahweh, the voice of he who “is and was and is to come” as he identified himself after saying “I’m Alpha and Omega.” The voice of Jesus comes, and he comes in the context of the seven lampstands. And we’re going to talk about that next week. But those are symbolic trees. Believe me, I’ll show you the reference next week from scripture.

So we have in the context of these trees of the garden, the spirit, the voice of Jesus Christ on the day of the Lord. So the day of the Lord originally was that day when God came and met with Adam and Eve. Now the day of the Lord throughout the Old Testament were reminders of that day, but pointing to a future day—the final day of the Lord—when judgment will be brought to consummation and completion in the context of our existence.

Now, so the point is that the day of the Lord—we can understand what it means to gather together on the day of the Lord the way John did by looking at what the scriptures say. And the scriptures say that we’re in the context of the spirit. We’ve been brought together. God is coming to meet with us as he met with Adam and Eve. As he met with his people on every festival day, as we talked about in our responsive reading earlier.

This trumpet blows when we summon together. God comes to meet with us, evaluate us, and do things—things in the context of our world.

So God’s revelation comes to John as it came to Adam in spirit on Sunday, the day the scriptures set apart, the church should as well—the day of evaluation, judgment, and kingdom manifestation.

So that tells us a little something about worship. Now we have more information as we continue to go through these observations and through the text. But for now, consider the proper response to the spirit of the Lord’s day. The spirit is the matchmaker. The spirit is the environment builder. The spirit is the church caller together, and the spirit brings us together so that we’re evaluated and judged by God on the day of the Lord, and this judgment sets out for us the importance of gathering in the presence of God.

Okay.

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Next observation: The centrality of voice, language, words, hearing, reading as opposed to sight is stressed throughout the book. He says that he was on the instrument of Lord’s day and he heard behind him a great voice. And he turns to see the voice. And the voice says, “What thou seest, write in a book.”

This is a repeated message throughout Revelation that he hears and then he sees. We talked about this before. I talked about it last week: the importance of Jesus’s Alpha and Omega, the importance of language and words.

You can look at me. I’m a visual picture. Is a picture worth a thousand words? We’ll see. Is seeing believing? We’ll see.

Why don’t I have a suit coat on today? It’s hot. Somebody says, “Any other guesses? It’s hot. Maybe it’s because it’s hot. Maybe it’s because to me the suit coat is kind of like a robe. It’s kind of like a ministerial garment because I don’t wear them very often. And but maybe the tie’s enough. Maybe I’ve decided that from now on all I need is a tie because I don’t wear a tie very often. Maybe that’s my robe today.”

You might think those things. You wouldn’t know, though, would you? Until you hear words from me. And I will tell you that the reason is not that I forgot to put a suit coat in a car either. It’s another possible reason. But in point of fact, it’s because I grabbed Elijah’s suit coat, which doesn’t fit me. See, you wouldn’t know that because a picture is not worth a thousand words. See, seeing is not believing.

There’s a movie. I’m not necessarily saying I recommend it because it has some very bad language, and there’s no nudity in it, but there’s bad language and some suggestive scenes. It’s a very interesting movie called “Face Off.”

And the basic idea is a good guy and a bad guy. The good guy is named Archer—kind of interesting: Sean Archer. The bad guy and his brother are Castor and Pollack—Castor and Pollack, Troy. They’re good Greeks, you see. I mean, it doesn’t say they’re Greeks, but that’s the point of the names.

Castor, by the way, has a son, Adam, who eventually—four, five, six-year-old son—who’s adopted by the good guy at the end of the movie in a glory cloud of beautiful light. So it’s a wonderful summation to the picture and the redemption of the world represented by Adam to Jesus Christ.

The good guy assumes the flesh of the bad guy. He gets his face changed with Nicholas Cage. And it’s kind of like the incarnation, taking upon himself sinful flesh to bring redemption to Los Angeles from a plague of biblical proportions—is the terminology that was used.

Well, you may think I’m getting awful weird on that, but the point is this. There’s a critical scene in the movie, right? So you got the good guy looks like the bad guy, and the bad guy looks like the good guy, and he’s sleeping with Eve. Eve is Sean Archer’s wife’s name, right? He’s sleeping with the church. The bad guy is. And that’s the problem today: Satan is sleeping with the church in all too many places in this world.

But in any event, so the good guy looks at the bad guy, bad guy looks like the good guy. And at one point toward the end of the movie, they’re struggling. And the good guy’s daughter has a gun, and she’s going to have to shoot one of them. And the good guy who looks like the bad guy says, “Don’t trust what you see. Listen to the voice.”

Because there’s voice modulators, but they’re starting to give out. So for a minute there, his voice sounds like her dad. He says, “Don’t trust what you see. Listen to the voice.” It’s a small part of the movie, but it’s an example of the centrality of voice.

In the scriptures, image worship—I’ve made this point many times—icon worship is prohibited by God’s word. The Eastern Orthodox worship primarily via icons and image. And as a result, there’s no societal progression in Eastern Orthodox countries. They stay put, because the word is what invades a culture, invades your life, and transforms you.

So here at the center is this saying that John hears and then he sees.

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Okay. So the centrality of the voice of God—by the way, I didn’t plan it this way, but again, this statement is in the fourth out of seven slots. Seven observations, and in the fourth, when we get to the picture of Jesus, we’ll see in a couple of weeks, we’ll see the sevenfold attributes of our Savior, and the middle one. What do you suppose it’s going to be? It’s his voice. It’s the voice.

There’s pictures of the face, there’s pictures of the appendages, hands and legs. And right at the center of this visual representation recorded for us in Revelation of Jesus is his voice, because it’s the voice of Christ, the word of God, that penetrates and does the transformational work in the context of worship and in the context of all of our lives.

Okay. So the centrality of voice is pictured for us in this: the verbal revelation is necessary in order to understand the visual revelation. Obviously, a lot of images that he sees, but the words interpret what is seen. The way you have to hear from my lips why I don’t have a suit coat on today.

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Okay.

Fifth observation: God’s trumpet voice effects. And I list a number of things. This voice is as of a trumpet.

There were two kinds of trumpets in the Old Testament. Remember, we said this is the capstone. You’ve got to take these images and go back to the scriptures. What do they mean? What does it mean that he’s in a cloud? We look at clouds. What does it mean that his voice sounds like a trumpet?

Well, there were two kinds of trumpets in the Old Testament. There was a ram’s horn, and then there was this glorified silver horn, as it were. The ram’s horn, and this is probably the most obvious imagery here, is that John is called in on the spirit of the Lord’s day into this encounter with Christ, and he hears the voice as of a trumpet.

Well, on Sinai, when people assembled, they heard the voice like a trumpet on Sinai. So the first obvious imagery we’re supposed to bring into this text is the relationship between Sinai and this and the book of Revelation, and what this trumpet of Jesus Christ—what the voice of Christ—indicates is that this is the greater Exodus.

We’ve talked about this a lot the last couple of months. R.J. Rushdoony in his commentary on the first chapter of Revelation—that’s the entire theme that he draws out—is that we’re involved in the greater Exodus here. And after the Exodus, you receive the law on Sinai. So this is the trumpet brings us to mind that we are that God has affected and is affecting the greater Exodus. People are coming out.

The trumpet—this ram’s horn—was blown also on the great Day of Atonement at the commencement of the greater year of Jubilee. So in the Old Testament, 49th year, 50th year is about to begin—day of atonement—that ram’s horn is blown. Jesus’s voice—trumpet in Revelation—affects the greater jubilee based upon the greater day of atonement.

Old Testament: blood of bulls and beasts. New Testament: Jesus is made full atonement. What’s the result? The great year of liberty. Jesus’s first sermon recorded in scripture is about, “Hey, you’re in Jubilee. It’s here now.”

And so here Jesus’s voice trumpets out in Revelation and affects the greater Jubilee. What’s Jubilee about? Kicking back and having a good time? No, it’s about restoration of people back to their original lands. Jesus is, in a sense, fully—fully takes charge of all the earth. He receives the earth as his inheritance, right? The Father: “Ask of me what you will. I give you the heathen for thine inheritance.” The world is turned back.

You know, Paul said to the pagans in the book of Acts, “Used to be different. Now things have changed. Now God’s not overlooking anything. He’s claiming all nations now.” He basically had one in the Old Testament. Every place is being claimed now. You got to get out unless you repent. You got to be dispossessed, because he’s coming back. The year of Jubilee’s here, you see.

So it’s about the return of people to the land, and it is about our return of dominion to our land—that the world is given back to the church as well. Dominion is affected by the preaching of the gospel. See, it’s about the destruction of the greater Jericho. The ram’s horn was blown at Jericho, and the walls came down. Seven trumpets, right? And seven trumpets sound forth in the major section of the book of Revelation.

Jericho wasn’t the last city to fall. Jericho was the first city to fall. So as Revelation trumpets out the seven trumpets and the walls of Jerusalem, the Harlot, Babylon, Jericho, come down. It doesn’t mean that’s the end. It means that’s the beginning of the conquest of all the earth. Now we’re supposed to go out and preach the gospel and disciple the nations.

You see, Jericho fell, Jerusalem’s gone. We’re on the march. Now we’re moving on to Ai and on through the land. That’s what God’s voice trumpet affects: the greater feast of trumpets, talked about Leviticus 23, but it doesn’t really say what it’s all about, but it does say in Leviticus 23 that it’s ten days before the year of Jubilee. And that correlates to Revelation 2:10.

We’ll look at that as we get to that particular epistle. So this horn—trumpet voice—reminds us of the ram’s horn. We want to understand it in terms of that. It talks about the Exodus. It talks about the day of atonement, the year of Jubilee, the conquest of the land, and the feast of trumpets leading up to Jubilee.

Now, there’s this silver horn. The silver horn that was created in or made—they were told to make it in Numbers chapter 10. Turn to that part of your Bible: Numbers chapter 10, for this.

And He tells them to build this horn—two horns actually. “The Lord said unto Moses, Numbers chapters 10: ‘Make thee two trumpets of silver of a whole piece. Shalt thou make them that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly and for the journey of the camps. When you blow on them, all the assembly shall assemble together to the door unto thee at the door of the table of the—of the tabernacle of the congregation.’”

So this silver horn was specifically used to call together God’s people into assembly. You see?

Well, Jesus is trumpeting forth here, and he’s calling John to heaven, and he’s calling God’s people to assemble. And we can see the immediate application of that for worship. We assemble together.

Now, drop down to verse 9 and correlate to this assembling together of the people. “And if you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresses you, then you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets, and you shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.”

Okay? So you’re called together, but then you go out, and when you go out, you blow the trumpet, and it’s a memorial to God, and he comes to be with you as you conquer the land. You see, so the silver trumpet is for the assembling of God’s people, but it’s so that they might indeed also be accompanied by the presence of God as they go out and conquer the land.

Remember, this is Numbers. Numbers is about the army of God getting ready to conquer the land.

And then verse 10: “Also in the day of your gladness—that’s today. Yeah. The day of our gladness. Hopefully, it’s a day of gladness to you. And in your solemn days and in the beginnings of your months, you shall blow with the trumpet over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings that they may be to you for a memorial before your God. I am the Lord your God. Worship. Worship.”

The trumpet is blown to assemble the people. The people go out, trumpet being blown, so that God might be with them in conquest. And the trumpet is blown as they celebrate worship.

Did you hear the trumpet this morning? Did you hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Come worship.” And did you understand that worship involved being in the spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ coming to evaluate you, assembling us together so that he might be with us, but so that he might be with us as we go out as well and conquer this land and affect the manifestation of the year of Jubilee—has been ushered in through the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do you understand the significance of the call to worship this morning, as you heard your alarm clock going off or your wife, your husband saying, “Time to get our children, your parents saying, ‘Let’s go worship God.’” Did you understand what that worship is about?

Worship is about the greater Exodus that Christ has brought us into the land now. And we’re in the process of conquering. And he’s coming to meet with us and make us a purified people so that we might go forth preaching that gospel as forgiven, redeemed sinners. And might affect the transformation of our lives and might affect the transformation of our world.

Well, that’s what worship is about. That’s what Jesus speaking to John in this section of Revelation chapter 1 is about, and that’s what the whole book is about.

The book is laid out as a worship service. I’ve given you another outline from Reverend Jordan showing the portions of the book correlating to a worship service. And you’ll see that at this church, we didn’t just decide, “Hey, let’s do it this way. This is kind of fun. Let’s start with the call to worship and then do a confession of sin.” No, we may not have a rule of what we’re trying to do is follow the biblical patterns for worship.

Because worship in the book of Revelation is pictured as integral to the conquest of the land. What we do tomorrow has significance because of what we do today. As the trumpets are blown, things happen in the world. And as God’s people take communion, the vials or the bowls of blood are poured out on the world. As we take of the supper of the Lord—of the Lord—here this afternoon, the ravens get to eat the body of the rebels against Jesus Christ outside of here.

That pattern is set up in worship. And that pattern works itself out in the other six days of the week. Well, you say, “Well, that’s pretty heavy stuff, Dennis. That’s really…”