Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 5 does seem to very accurately picture much of the truths that we find in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation. May not seem that way to you yet, but hopefully it’ll become a little clearer as we preach through a concluding sermon on these first three chapters. Sin crouches at the door, but God says we are more than overcomers through the Lord Jesus Christ. Sermon scripture is found in Revelation 1:1.

So please turn to there. Revelation 1:1. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place. And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John. Let’s pray. Father, we pray that you would give us understanding. Father, we know that your word is indeed to be a lamp to us, a light to our path.

It gives us counsel. We are to treasure it very, very highly. It is sweeter than honey to us, Lord God, and more valuable than much refined gold. And we pray, Father, that your spirit would do his work that he has promised to do to take this word and write it upon our hearts and cause us, Father, to come to amend, make amendments for our life, to repair, to repent, and to move in the newness of the Holy Spirit as your word does its work by transforming us.

We ask this through the mighty and powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen. Please be seated. Hopefully, I’ll do it succinctly in a way that will be understood, but there is much material to cover. We’re going to go through the first three chapters and kind of sum up the things we learned. So I wanted to start by noting that we just went through Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day back to back.

One of the things that this series on Revelation did for me was it put a quotation from Balaam found in Numbers upon my lips more often than I used to quote it. And on Friday the 13th, I think about that day and it comes up and there it is and this verse comes to mind. Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob. Neither is there any divination against Israel. No enchantment against Jacob. No divination against Israel.

We don’t care if it’s Friday the 13th, do we? There is enchantment and divination against those that are outside of Christ. But not for us. So Friday the 13th is a reminder to us of the grace of God that God put these words in Balaam’s mouth. Balaam who hated the church, who wanted to curse the church for money. But God puts into his mouth no divination against Israel and no enchantment against Jacob.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. We actually went out on my wife and I and Mike and Lana went out Friday night the 13th. I suppose some of you went out last night, Valentine’s Day. And I hope you remember that Valentine was a real guy who lived in, I think, the 3rd century of the church who was martyred for the faith. He broke the law—well, it’s hard to get accurate information. But apparently when the emperor said, “No more marriages because we want good soldiers who aren’t married,” Valentine conducted secret marriages in obedience to the word of God, defying the state for the sake of God’s word, was imprisoned and eventually died for the faith.

And so, Valentine is a picture to us of love for the Lord Jesus Christ ultimately. And I hope as we had our focus on our sweeties, our wives and husbands, over the last couple of days, we look behind that, of course, to the great love of our life, the Lord Jesus Christ. We consider now his word to us and we find several observations as we go through chapter 1. I’ve got this broken up into chapter one and chapters two and three. Chapters two and three are understood through chapter 1.

And these are major sections of the book of Revelation. There’s a sense in which we’ve gone through half the book already because we’ve sort of given a picture of the rest of the book and the rest of the book just sort of works out the themes set up in the first three chapters. Next week I’ll leave the book of Revelation at least for a period of time and may return to it shortly. I’m not sure when, but at least I wanted to wrap up these first three chapters.

So, first of all, just going through chapter 1, we read in verse one that this is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show to his servants things which must shortly take place. And our first observation is this: this book is a revealing. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Children, this is not supposed to be a difficult book to understand. It’s to be a revealing, a making manifest, not hiding, making clear.

So we should have things made clear to us. And I think at least these first three chapters by now should be somewhat clear to you what’s going on. And if it isn’t, I please forgive me because I haven’t done my job well. This is supposed to be a revealing. Now, it is a little tough because it assumes you know all the rest of the Bible, but still, it’s a revealing. It is specifically the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And so the scriptures and certainly this capstone book of the scriptures isn’t given as a guide book for life. Ultimately, it’s given as the revelation, the revealing, the making manifest of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so our second observation is that centrality of Jesus Christ to this book, to the revelation that is the entire scriptures and to our lives. Jesus is at the heart and center of this book.

It’s the revelation he gives, but it also concerns him, his actions in history now that he has ascended to the right hand of the Father and assumed reign. So the centrality of Jesus Christ. Third, our designation in this opening verse is as servants. It’s a revelation given to those who are his servants. So immediately we’re placed in the context of the rest of the book to understand that this is a book that shows us Jesus Christ in relationship to his servants.

So all of our lives are to be of service to the Lord Jesus Christ. Fourth, and by means of interpretation, we’re told something as well in these opening verses. It says that he sent and signified this book. He signified this book. The Lord Jesus is our king. And Jesus tells us here in the opening verse that this book is going to have a lot of pictures, symbols, signs. And in fact, we’re going to have to interpret that way.

You know, we have the grammatical historical method of interpretation. We take the way a part of the Bible was written to the audience to whom it was written. We know something about the history of the writing to help us understand what it says. We look at the grammatical structure and its obvious meaning in that grammatical structure. But this book says that the proper grammatical device to apply to this book is that it’s not a doctrinal thesis or treatise.

It is a series of symbols or pictures. And so we must interpret this symbolically. The scriptures tell us that when you get people giving you a hassle about using symbolic interpretation of the book of Revelation, I hope by now you’re well enough trained to go right to verse one and say verse one tells us what this book is about. It’s about Jesus. It’s a making clear to his servants and it’s a book that is to be interpreted by way of signification.

Okay. So we use a biblically regulated symbolic interpretation of this book. And this book tells us immediately also—and I skipped over this point, I go back to it now—that these are things that must shortly take place. Nice verse one. You see how much information is in verse one that if you get stuck in a conversation, you go right to verse one. This book is about things that must shortly take place.

And God is not a liar. This is not about things preeminently that go way off in the future sometime in our future. We used a preterist approach. Preterist means past. This book was about past events to us because it’s about events that took place shortly and specifically in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the full creation, the maturation of the church of Jesus Christ. And it is a book that’s to be interpreted symbolically.

But by that we don’t mean that we get to look at this book and say, “Well, gee, I wonder what that means to me, that symbol. What does it make me think of?” You know, that’s not the idea. The idea is what does it make you think of relative to the Bible? It’s a biblically regulated symbolic interpretation. So when we read about commerce, we can’t just say, “What does commerce mean to me?” We have to say, “What does the Bible say about commerce and transactions?”

And in this very book, we looked at one of the letters to the churches that said that commerce is about the transaction at worship between Jesus and his saints. We buy faith here and we buy righteousness here as we come to worship God. So commerce is understood on the basis of the transaction we have with God through Christ. You see, it’s not up to our interpretation. It’s not our imagination. It’s not figurative in that sense.

It has to be interpreted by means of the Bible and the message of all the Bible. It’s biblically regulated. It’s signified. Sixth, this book involves the mediation of angels. Right away, it says that this is sent to John by means of his angel. Now, Christ is the ultimate angel or messenger. But throughout this book, we’ve got a bunch of angels. And if we come to understand that the angels were put in charge of the garden when man was kicked out, the angels were tutors keeping us under tutelage while we were young and immature in the Old Testament.

And man replaces them. In the New Testament, which the Bible teaches, man is placed a little lower than the angels for a while, but not now in Christ. Now we’re above the angels. And if this book uses all this angelic language, it’s referring to things that happened prior to AD 70 when the fullness of the church has matured. Okay. James B. Jordan says, and I think it’s a good thought—I don’t know if he’s right or not, it’s a good thought—that the most significant reason you can give people why this book is about things that happened in the contemporary life of the people it was written to, in other words, prior to AD 70 is that the book involves angels doing all this stuff because after AD 70, angels are no longer the primary means of ruling the earth. We are. Paul said, “Don’t you know we’re going to judge angels? We’ve been placed in a superior position to them.” Now, this book involves angelic mediation.

Now, I have these observations and then I have dominant themes. And the first dominant theme from verse one is again the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ, the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s central. He determines how this book is going to be interpreted. He determines who guards and governs his world. And this book is centrally about him. And I have a very pointed question for you this morning.

And it may sound silly and it may sound, you know, immature, but it’s a question we need to ask ourselves when confronted with this first verse of the book of Revelation. How important is Jesus Christ to you? How important is Jesus to you? How essential is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ to your life? Ask yourself, how often did I think of Jesus Christ this last week? I mean, not about, you know, the theology of the scriptures or the doctrines or that stuff.

That’s all good and proper, but only as it’s related to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Pharisees were chided by our savior. You serve the book, but that book testifies of me, and you will refuse to know me. You don’t love me, and the book will do you no good if you don’t love me. And children, I want you to study your Bibles. I want you to search the scriptures. Jesus wasn’t saying that was bad.

He said the same thing to him about tithing. You know, he said, “You tithe these things, but you neglect the greater more important aspects of the word.” But he said, “You should do the tithing. You should do the searching of the scriptures. But you must do it in relationship to a love of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, not for a set of abstract ideas.” There’s a book that many of us were benefited from a number of years ago called Ideas Have Consequences and they do.

But ultimately, it’s the Lord Jesus who has the great consequence of life and truths from him have consequences in our life. I want you to seriously talk to yourself now and have a little monologue conversation with God, God right now saying, “How important is Jesus Christ to my life?” How much did I think of him? And when I spent my day yesterday with the love of my life, did I understand the basis for that love is my love for the Lord Jesus Christ?

And was Valentine’s Day a day in which you applied your thoughts to your great love of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ? How often do you talk to him? And how often does he talk to you? And we talk to Jesus, we talk to God, the Father, and the Spirit in prayer. How often do you pray? Now, you know, I’m not particularly interested in the form of the prayer. Written out prayers are great. Long prayers are okay.

Short sentence prayers in our minds as we go through the day—that’s important. All that stuff’s important. And if you love Jesus and understand your need for him, your day will be filled with prayer to him. And if it isn’t, you know, repent, turn around, recognize the centrality of Christ. And how often does he talk to you? How often do you open his word to hear what he has to say to you? How often does he speak to you by means of the Spirit who talks by means of his word?

The Spirit comes to minister Christ to us by means of the word. And do you feel bad when you dishonor Jesus? If you love your husband, you love your wife, you love your parents, you’re going to feel bad if you bring dishonor to their name somehow by your actions. In your love for Christ and in his centrality to your life, do you feel bad when you dishonor and shame the Lord Jesus Christ and his church?

Do you feel bad when you displease him? Do you feel his displeasure at your actions? And does it move you to repentance and to further love for him? My daughter this morning as we got up played that well—she played it for prelude too—”Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.” This book is about the love of Christ for his saints. And do you know that Jesus loves you? Do you understand what that love is?

And let me just say that well, we’ll get to this in a little bit, I guess, in terms we talk about the church at Ephesus in terms of what that love looks like. But I do want you to understand this. I want you to understand that if you love Christ, then you’re to love him as a servant loves his master because the book is written to servants. How well do you serve your master? And is your motivation duty or is your motivation love?

Do you believe him? Submitting yourselves to him and not just know intellectually or feel. You can have an intellectual say, “Yeah, I know Jesus is Lord.” Or you can say, “Gee, I really feel neat toward Jesus today.” I don’t think that’s what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a love for Christ that is based upon belief and submission that brings together the mind and the heart in its relationship to Jesus Christ.

We must ask ourselves, do we love the Lord Jesus? Is he central to our lives? You let Jesus interpret this book. Maybe you don’t like the fact that I said it’s signified or symbolically interpretive. That’s what Jesus says. Well, you submit to the centrality of Christ in terms of how you interpret his very word. Now, it’s pretty easy in the abstract to say, “Yeah, I love Jesus, Dennis. Sure, I do.” And I, “you don’t like my wife too much. My children are having trouble with,” but I love Jesus.” Well, you know, in 1 John, of course, it says that any man who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar. We don’t see Jesus manifest before us. But we do see the image bearers of God around us all the time. And so we, First John says we want to measure our love for God by how well we love the representations or image bearers of God around us.

Our brothers and our sisters in the Lord. How well do you love your image bearers that God has surrounded you with? Your parents, your children, your brothers and sisters, etc. Centrality of Jesus Christ. Okay. Moving on to the next set of observations. There is a blessing attached to those who keep his words. In verse three, we read, “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.” There’s a blessing attached to this.

Okay, that’s important. But it’s a blessing attached to those who hear this word and keep its words—obedience. Now, if you want the blessing, which I assume you want, then you want to understand what this Bible, this particular book tells you to do and do it. And understand too—we’ve talked about this before—but it says those who hear the words. The one who reads is in a corporate setting here. Remember that this is a revelation, this is a book given not to individual Christians. It’s given to churches. Messages to churches. Now it’s true that it has application to you individually, but it’s a corporate word and you’re supposed to hear the word of God read in the public services of the church and in the preaching of the word, and you’re supposed to be transformed as a result of that. Okay.

You keep what you hear in the reading of the word. It’s so easy to read our Bibles every day and to read them the way we want to read them. You know, you’re looking for things that you know you want to see in there and it’s real easy to read that Bible and just have it be a reflection of what you want. God says that when you hear it externally read from another, then it has a greater power because it challenges you and your ideas of what that word says. It brings along things that may jolt you a little bit. It’s good.

What I’m trying to say—application of this book—it’s a good thing in our homes to have the public reading, not public, with the vocalization of the word of God. The father reading the word to the family, mother and father reading the word to each other. Children reading the word to each other out loud. See, the pattern is set in worship and it’s supposed to happen in our families. We’ve talked about family worship, family devotion, and we used to have devotionals in the Baptist churches, evangelical churches. Devotionals were individual, right? You go into your prayer closet and you do your own thing with God.

Now that’s good. Jesus gives us that model too when he went off to pray. Family worship is corporate. And one value of corporate devotional activities is it should increase devotional love to Jesus. That’s the whole point. But one good thing about family devotions is again this reading of the word from another to us. Okay? And we have that encouragement of people as a group working through the word of God instead of just, you know, seeing what we want to see.

Okay. A blessing attached to those who keep its words and who hear the words of the book. Number eight, this book posits a movement from grace to peace—God’s blessing to his order. Okay? It goes from grace to peace. “Grace and peace,” it says, and these next ones kind of go together. We’re in verse four now. “John to the seven churches which are in Asia. Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.

And from the seven spirits before his throne. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” You see the triplets here. The end of the first triplet was “he who is to come.” The end of the second triplet was “the ruler of the kings of the earth.” And this third triplet is in verses five and six. “To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests to his God and Father.”

The third series of these triplets is “him who has made us kings and priests.” You see, I thought of the Evans Boys this morning on the way to church, Sam and Dave. And some of us who are older and who used to listen to, worldly music, I guess you could call it. I know there’s a song by Sam and Dave, “Hold on, I’m coming. Hold on, I’m coming.” I think that many of those black rock and roll songs, by the way, had their origins in the church and in the services. “After Midnight” referred to the fact that Christ was going to come at midnight or an hour men didn’t know.

And ultimately, we can say that what this book says is to a church that is struggling, hold on. I’m coming. Jesus is the one who is coming, who is moving us from grace to peace. Peace is not the peace of the graveyard. Peace is the presence of God with all his blessings attended with his presence, his order in the world. We see disorder today. We see disorder in our world. We see disorder in our lives.

We see disorder in our own hearts. And Christ says that history is about moving us from his grace to his order in our lives. And he says to the church that’s suffering, I am the one who is coming and I’m coming quick to manifest the fact that I am ruler over all the kings of the earth. And in fact, I’m coming to make you kings and priests in the context of the world. You’re going to overcome. That doesn’t mean you’re going to hold out.

It means you’re going to conquer and you’re going to crush heads and you’re going to defeat the beast who seeks to prevent us from worshiping God and who causes us to sin and wants to cause us to sin and we give way to it. So Jesus says to hold on. He’s coming. Whatever difficulty we have in our lives right now, he is coming in manifestations in our lives and in history to manifest the fact that he is ruler over kings of the earth and he makes us priests and kings under him.

The assurance of this movement, number nine, from grace to peace is found in the one who is to come, the ruler of the kings of the earth, who makes us kings and priests in time by means of the fullness of the Spirit, the seven spirits of God, the fullness of the Spirit’s work. All the world will be evangelized and discipled as Christ reigns in time and space. Remember verse 7—we went through this several months back.

“Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even they who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him.” Remember, he takes there. He brings together a text from the book of Daniel and a text from the book of Zechariah. And if we go back when we studied those texts, what are they talking about? They’re talking about he ascends to the throne room of the Father, receives the reign from God, and then Zechariah says the end result of his work in the world is that every eye will recognize him.

Now, it’s true that believers and unbelievers all will bow before Christ. But this text tells us that those who pierced him shall see him. And Zechariah, the context for that is salvation. It’s men who had sinned against Christ and are brought to salvation by becoming cognizant, knowing him whom they have pierced, that he is the king of glory. So in this particular phrase what’s being talked about is that this movement from grace to peace comes about as Christ works in history.

His word is preached and all the nations of the world become converted. That didn’t mean everybody in the earth is saved but it means that predominantly history flows in terms of all nations becoming Christians, okay, and being discipled. Our savior told us in the Great Commission, this is what he had in mind for us. You know, “Go into all the world preaching the gospel, discipling the nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” And so that same thing is repeated here. All the tribes of the earth, all the nations will mourn because of him. They’ll mourn repentantly for their sins as they come to salvation.

Okay. So the dominant theme here is the centrality of victory. This book tells us that Christ is central and this book tells us, number two, that Christ is king and he is a victorious conqueror. That’s the picture in Revelation chapter 1. And that means that we will overcome. And we get to the overcoming in the seven letters to the seven churches. “You him who overcomes, I’ll do this for him.” We’re flowing in the pattern of Jesus because he is the great overcomer.

Who manifests himself in history and moves the world from grace to peace, the order of God. We need to hear that because as we look around us, we don’t see it with our eyes. You know, we see other things going on. We see problems in the world. We see the kind of governors, civil governors we have in this country, and we think, you know, what’s going on? Well, hold on. Christ is coming. He’ll manifest himself in terms of the civil chaos of this country.

And he’ll do it quickly. It won’t go on long. Seems like a long time, but it’ll happen quickly. And in your own life, you may have disorder. You may have trouble. Not God’s peace. God says, “Hold on. Persevere in the faith of Christ because Christ is coming.” And what he’s going to manifest himself as is as victor. What’s your definition of victory, though? You know, that plays into this. What does it look like?

Is it the blessings of God? Is that what you seek in life? Do you seek the presence of God and his order in your life? Or do you seek some kind of other manifestation of what you would think of as victory? The wife finally does what I tell her to do. Kids finally get in line. That’s not what God’s talking about. God does reconcile relationships—husband and wife and children all begin to work in their proper relationships—but usually it looks a lot different than what the husband thinks.

At the beginning of the situation, doesn’t it, man? You know, if you’ve been married very long, you know what I’m talking about. You know, you think what it should look like—with your kids and wives submitting to your headship—and then Jesus humbles you and shows you your sin and shows you that it looks like something a lot different when it gets right down to it. Now, the wife is submissive biblically, but that’s different from the way we want our children to submit and our wives to submit.

Looks different. The victory is Christ’s victory, his blessings, his order, which involves our humiliation and service which usually is not what we think of as victory. We want the victory, you know, of the Persian view of heaven where we get to go up there and just lay around with a bunch of harem girls, you know, and have a neat time. That’s, you know, men’s view of what victory is like, you know, we get served and all this.

That’s not what the scriptures say. The victory that he promises us is victory sustaining us in our service to the Lord Jesus Christ and to his image bearers, effectively serving—different deal. God’s blessings are on those who keep the words of the book. Do you know what those words are? Kids, you want victory. Boys want victory. Do you know what this book tells you to do? If you want the blessings attached to it and the victory, you got to know that first of all.

And do you have to care about attaining those things? Okay. And do you believe Jesus’s word? He says that he’s the conqueror of the kings of the earth and we’re the kings. He has made us kings and priests. Do we have, in the words of R.J. Rushdoony, a blocked or an open future? It is critical in terms of the motivation for mankind to see light at the end of the tunnel. If you do not see light, we despair and we fade off and we quit.

And Jesus says in this book, preeminently in this book, there is light. It’s at the end of the tunnel and it is a short tunnel. You’re suffering. Understand I’m coming. I’m coming. Hold on. Hope—that John spoke so well in, uh, two weeks ago—is what’s being talked about. Okay. Observation number 11. John, like Adam, is in the spirit on the Lord’s day. And here’s God.

Verse 10 of chapter 1. “I was in spirit.” There’s no definite article. “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day,” the day of the Lord. Same thing in the Greek. “And I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet saying, I am alpha and omega.” John is like Adam here. That’s the association we’re supposed to draw. Remember, Adam was in the context of the Spirit as God came to him in the book of Genesis. He was in spirit on the Lord’s day also—the breath of God comes, the Spirit of God, and manifests himself to Adam.

And so right away this book tells us that this movement to victory includes the new creation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And actually before I go to the dominant theme here, I want to continue on to point 12. But see here that he says he hears behind him a trumpet, the voice of a trumpet. The trumpet calls the church. We look at what the trumpet does in the Bible. The trumpet calls the church to worship. The trumpet calls the church to transformation of who they are.

The trumpet calls the church to conquer as the conquering army of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what the trumpet did in the Old Testament. So when Christ trumpets here to John to get his attention on the Lord’s day, he’s calling John to worship. He was in spirit. I believe it means he was in the worship services of the church. The Spirit draws us together and organizes the worshiping community of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is where the revelation of Jesus Christ comes to John. It’s the same place the revelation of Jesus Christ comes to us preeminently. It’s in the context of the Spirit environment ordained and regulated by his word when we come together in a special way as the convocative host of God to give him praise and worship. Observation number 12 is Christ, the true gardener, manifests himself amongst the planting of the Lord, the watcher trees of the churches and pastors.

And that goes on to tell us that in verse 12: “Then I turn to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands.” Remember the lampstands? How do we interpret it? We don’t look at our lampstands in our piano. We look at the lampstands in the Bible. And what were the lampstands in the Bible? They were almond trees, watcher trees. The lights were watching over the world in the context of the temple.

“I saw seven golden lampstands. In the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.” So Jesus is the gardener. He’s in the context of the garden, the trees, the planting of the Lord, the churches and the pastors of the Lord. And those trees are watcher trees watching over God’s world for him and reporting to him.

And I want to link these two dominant themes of the new creation and then the point after number 12, the importance of Lord’s day worship. This book is about the centrality of Jesus Christ. And the book is about how Christ is central in the context of conquest and victory. We are overcomers in Christ and this world will be overcome through the church. And the book tells us, as the third dominant theme here, that the way that’s accomplished is through the corporate worship services of the church.

That’s where it all begins. And I believe that I believe that the scriptures teach us the importance of Lord’s day worship from beginning to end of the Bible. From the beginning day when God goes to meet Adam and Eve and they’ve sinned and they hide until these concluding books here where the entire worship service, the entire book of Revelation occurs, it seems, in the context of worship having worship elements throughout. Christ conquers the world by means of us worshiping him and of us pleading the blood of Christ and our prayers ascending to the throne room of God and he then manifests himself in judgments in the world.

We’re transformed not primarily as the result of doing our work, the six days of the week. We do our work. That’s important. And our personal reading of the Bible is important. Family worship is important. But I believe that the Spirit of God calls us together and he gives us his word and he gives us his sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and he transforms us. Then we go out of here different than we came in. If we’re doing things regulated by the word of God, John sees all of this in the context of the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The day of worship, specifically the Lord’s day, the beginning of the week, the day of resurrection. I did this before in one of these sermons and I’m going to ask it again now. Why are you here? Just think about that this morning. Why did you come here today? What are you doing? And be honest with yourself. It doesn’t do any good to hide. You know that God knows and he wants us to know why we’re here.

Are you here out of duty or obligation? Duty is an okay thing, but ultimately it shouldn’t be while you’re here. Are you here to fellowship with your friends? That’s a great thing. It’s one of the great blessings of New Covenant worship is we get to meet with God in the context of the host and we fellowship together and we synagogue together in the context of our worship to God. But it’s not the primary reason why we come together.

The Bible says you’re supposed to want to run to this place with joy in your hearts, not dragging your feet because you have to. You’re supposed to run to this place and you get to worship God with the saints. I hope that is our motivation here. I believe it should be our motivation. I believe we should be here ultimately to praise and worship God, to confess our sins and to have our lives transformed. Psalm 5, you know, that’s what it’s all about.

The whole Psalms are about this meeting with God and in the context of that meeting with God being assured that we’re moving from grace to peace, you know, from the grace that brings us in the door to the transformation that produces God’s order in our lives. Things change in the context of the worship service. God deals with us. He shows us we’re blind and naked in some way and we repent of that and we plead the blood of Christ and he stops temptation for us.

He allows us to overcome our sins and our difficulties and he allows us to overcome the enemies that we have, enemies that dot the Psalter throughout. The enemies of the man of God internal to him, his own sin, and external, fallen men who seek to destroy the church. I believe in the primacy of the worship of God in the special convocative worship that is ordained for the Lord’s day. Liturgical transformation is what occurs on the Lord’s day.

I don’t know if I want to mention this song or not. There was a fellow tremendously gifted but a very troubled man raised by a pastor, a black man, eventually was shot by his own father. One of the most gifted voices I’ve ever heard in popular singing. His name was Marvin Gaye. And toward the end he was really in his rejection of Christ. You know, “you got to serve somebody.” And he served the sexual urge.

He did. And he had a song, “Sexual Healing.” And as I was thinking last night about this sermon and trying to get across what I’m talking about here, we have weeks and God deals with us and things can be tough. We have good weeks and bad weeks, but all of our weeks involve struggle, difficulty, things we need to overcome. And God says that liturgical healing is what we need. We need to come before his presence.

We need to give him worship and praise. We want to love him and be here out of a love for him that gives him worship and praise. And he heals us. He promises to heal us here. He promises to transform us. Now, it may not be, you know, the kind of healing we want. As I said, the victory won’t look like we think it’s going to look because we’re transformed. We got new eyes in the context of the worship of God.

But he heals us and we need that liturgical healing that the Lord’s day service brings with it. This day is indeed, as we sing in one of our songs, “the best of all the seven.” This is the day of rest and the finished work of our Savior. This is the only day in the Bible that has a term attached to it in the gospels, the day of preparation. Saturday is referred to in the Gospel as “a Friday”—in the Old Covenant system, but the day before Sabbath as the day of preparation.

And we’ve talked about that before in this church that Saturday should be considered by us, to some degree at least, a day of preparation. Getting ready so that we don’t come here tired, so that we don’t come here, you know, with sin that’s in the context of our family against our wives or our children or our husbands or other Christians. We prepare our hearts. We don’t have to hurry up Sunday morning, get everything ready and get all frantic and chaotic and then try to come here and then get into the worship environment.

We want to do what we can on Saturday to prepare for worshiping God correctly. Watson in his book going through the Ten Commandments has a tremendous section on preparation. Some of you may remember me preaching years ago and going through the order of worship, the day of preparation—a sermon I gave, preparing ourselves to hear the word, you know, preparing ourselves to praise God. Is this important to you?

If it’s important, then I’d suggest that it would lead to a re-evaluation of how well we prepare ourselves for Lord’s day worship. And if it’s important that we’re here to do the thing that God has most called us to do—to glorify him and praise—that we’d want to do it with our whole heart. And we’d come here and not just kind of mumble through the words, the songs. Hope I don’t offend you, but we’d sing with gusto to God.

That we’d praise his name and we wouldn’t worry about how we’re going to sound to the person next to us and sing softly somehow. That we’d sing out in praise of the Creator who is the Lord Jesus Christ, the center of our world, and the one who has received our praise and blessing. How well did you prepare yesterday for Lord’s day worship today? Did you prepare at all? Did you think about it? Do you think that this, you know, if you were going to meet with President Clinton?

Well, here’s a different example. You probably wouldn’t go if it was him, but if, oh, let’s say Senator Ashcroft, who seems to be a good Christian man, and he’s putting together a dinner, and he wants you to be there, and he’ll send a plane and have you come and fly out to be. You’d really think about it, wouldn’t you? You’d want to put on your best. You’d want to be, you know, in a good frame of mind to meet with the Senator.

And the Lord Jesus Christ says that he’s got a date with you. A lot of you had dates yesterday. I had a date Friday night. He says, “I got a date with you. Every Sunday morning at 10:30, I’m going to get together. We’re going to have dinner, have a great time. I’m going to accept your praise. I’m going to build you up and I’m going to tell you and I’m going to transform you so that you walk out of your meeting with me a lot better person, more peaceful, more ordered in your life, resolving the conflicts.”

See, if we understand that, then the day of preparation becomes real important to us. We want to get here, you know, we want to get in a good frame of mind. We want to get here to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I probably stress that too much. Okay. Observation 13: While his definitive work is finished, his progressive work of manifesting his reign is indicated by his appearance as the mighty Nazarite warrior of God whose voice is central.

Boy, that’s a mouthful, huh? Let’s look at verse 14. Remember, he’s central. He’s victorious. This victory is mediated by means of Lord’s day worship. It’s when all this happens. And in the context of Lord’s day worship, he manifests himself to John in this book. And what does he manifest himself as? Verses 14-16: “His head and hair were white like wool, white as snow. His eyes like a flame of fire.

His feet like unto brass as if refined in a furnace. Okay, so one, his head and hair. Two, his eyes like a flame of fire. Three, feet like fine brass, refined in a furnace. Four, fourth out of seven, central, his voice as the sound of many waters. Five, his right hand seven stars. Six, out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword. And seven, his countenance is like the sun shining in its strength.”

Opening and closing brackets of this chiasm, this liturgical structure of seven attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ are the picture of the Nazarite warrior whose head and hair are dedicated to the service of God, who is the warrior king and the warrior bridegroom that is pictured for us in Psalm 19. The Lord Jesus Christ is the great Nazarite warrior. That’s how he pictures himself here with this designation of head and hair and then shining with the brightness of the sun as the bridegroom comes up, right?

And the sun goes across the circuit. What’s he doing? He’s the bridegroom who’s killing the enemies of the bride. He’s winning for himself the bride. He is conquering all foes to God and to the church. That’s who Jesus manifests himself as. Now, how does he do it? The central aspect, the fourth of these sevenfold structure—remember the fourth is the most important thing in a literary sense—his voice, the sound of many waters. It’s the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s pictured in number six. The sword comes out. The voice of Christ is a conquering voice.

There’s a movie called Dune based on a book series. I never read the book. Saw the movie. And they had these weirding modules that you could learn how to say things in such ways they would kill people. You know, the voice became a weapon. Beautiful picture. I love that movie and it’s what Jesus talks about. The word of God goes out as a sharp two-edged sword and it cuts asunder. It kills people, but it also heals the elect in Christ. So it kills the bad guys and it brings the good guys through sacrifice and through consecration and repentance to God.

So, Jesus portrays himself in this central victorious Lord’s day manifestation as the great and mighty Nazarite warrior of God whose voice is central. Now, the Nazarites and warriors are born again. John sees it and John falls down dead. You cannot enlist in the army of Christ if you’re not dead first. Death comes first. So when in Revelation 19, Jesus is pictured as the warrior going out right on the white horse, the two edges of the sword coming out of his mouth.

He’s got all these people behind him. That’s the church. But these people who have fallen down dead before Christ acknowledge their sins and say, “We can do nothing to help this man fight anybody in our strength.” And he raises us back up and makes us that mighty warrior bride of his who accompanies him as he goes out storming the castle. Nazarites and warriors are born again.

Verses 17 to 19. The Nazarites and warriors’ work is carried out in the church, then by the church in the world.

Verse 20: “The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands. Seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. Seven lampstands are the pastors of the church. Jesus begins this Nazarite work of overcoming and conquering all of his enemies. By not going to Salem, by not going to the city council at Thyatira or to the chamber of commerce at Ephesus, he comes to the church and does the work here because this is where overcoming begins.

Jesus, the Nazarite warrior, comes to the church and the church follows him out of this place as his mighty conquering army, as that fiery stream that Daniel talks about. We’re water and fire as we go into this earth. We purify the earth and we water the earth and we conquer Christ’s enemies. Dominant theme: the importance of the church and her pastors. How important this statement that the church is central to this vision, central to the manifestation of Christ, central to the manifestation of his victory and the Lord’s day worship service is central to the task of the church.

This statement is a howling reproach against America and against Oregon and against Portland because we don’t give a rip for the most part what the church is or what it says today. The church is the—if you took one of these polls they do all the time—what’s the significance of the church as opposed to the school, the police, the civil state, the workplace. The church should run a far distant last.