Revelation 1:1-18

The Real Jesus - His Glory & Majesty

Sermon preached January 31, 2016
Opening
Every once in a while someone proudly tells me that theyve read the Bible, the whole
way through. And I have to admire that - I remember trying it when I was in seventh or
eight grade and I got stopped in my tracks by the Book of Numbers - the interminable
census of the people of Israel as they got ready to enter the Promised Land.
I suspect a lot of people who try reading the Bible the whole way through have a similar
experience. And there are lots of books like that - people think they should read them but
just cant get through it. War and Peace. Moby Dick. Ulysses, or anything else by James
Joyce.
For big thick hard books like those, there are Cliff Notes that summarize the book. To
summarize the Bible, one writer put it like this:
Adam bit
Noah arked
Abraham split
Joseph ruled
Jacob fooled
Bush talked
Moses balked
Pharaoh plagued
People walked
Sea divided
Tablets guided
Promise landed
Saul freaked
David peeked
Prophets warned
Jesus born
God walked
Love talked
Anger crucified
Hope died
Love rose
Spirit flamed
Word spread
God remained.
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Not bad - lacks a little context but what do you expect from a 30-second summary. One
glaring flaw though - it misses the end of the Bible - the book of Revelation - with its
message. The story doesnt just end with God remained as the neat little summary has
it - the story of the Bible ends with Christ wins, Christ rules.
The purpose of todays sermon is to unpack the image of Christ found in Revelation - and
through I hope a deeper understanding of who Christ really is, help us to find courage and
strength to stand up to the challenges and suffering that life puts in our path.
Even if I didnt know you as a congregation I love, even if you were a group of people I
just met, it would be certain that many of us here together are facing challenges and
pressures that are keeping us up at night, that hopefully are keeping us on our knees in
prayer. And as a dear friend of mine once said, Everyone sits next to a puddle of their
own tears.
Intro to Revelation
First, some context.
We believe Revelation was written by the apostle John who had been exiled to a little
island called Patmos in the Mediterranean Sea as punishment for following Jesus Christ.
If you were a threat, one way the Empire dealt with you is to remove you from public life
by sending you to an isolated place, like the island of Patmos, where you couldnt cause
trouble, couldnt exert any influence. Like Napoleon, exiled to St. Helena.
Well, John may have been exiled, but God wasnt through with him yet. God reached
down and lifted him up into heaven and gave him the vision in Revelation and told him to
send it to seven churches in Asia Minor. So Revelation is a circular letter, inspired by
God to provide comfort and strength to the Christians living in Asia Minor at the end of
the first century.
Why did they need it? Trouble was coming. In the person of the Roman Emperor
Domitian, who would soon launch the worst persecution Christians had endured - if you
look at vs. 19, the Lord says to John, write...what is to take place after this.
And it was terrible. Women and men and children, whose only crime was to love and
follow Jesus Christ, were impaled on stakes and lit on fire; had holes drilled in their
skulls and molten lead poured in; some had each arm and leg tied to a different horse and
the horses were spurred forward and the victim pulled to pieces; some were thrown to the
lions.1
And yet, they endured it. Christianity spread in part because Christians were able to
endure the unendurable and keep their faith and be a witness to Christ, and because they
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found courage to love and care for the poor and despised and sick - even in the midst of
plagues, they stayed behind to care for the sick. Romans watched our long-ago sisters
and brothers not only endure death, but meet it with courage and even joy. And they
changed the world by their witness.
How did endure it? Because of the deep truths that Jesus Christ had John communicate
to these Christians. And you and I - weve got plenty of problems. Most of them arent
close to what these first-century Christians went through. But the good news John shared
with them is for us to. Lets dig in.
Jesus Christ is Lord of All
Eugene Peterson in his fine book on Revelation points out, the revelation is about Jesus
Christ; the revelation comes by means of Jesus Christ - Jesus Christ is both the content of
the revelation and the agent of the revelation.2
And the picture of Christ we find here - its kind of weird and scary.
What happened to the benevolent Jesus holding children in his arms? The compassionate
Jesus touching and healing a leper? The tragic Jesus, arms and legs splayed on a cross?
Well, they are all still there, but this book, placed at the end of the Bible, gives us what
you could call the last word, the final word, about Jesus Christ.
And we see him here as a towering, powerful figure glowing with glory. At the end of
the Bible, after weve plowed through Acts and the Epistles, all attention is now drawn
back to this majestic figure. Jesus Christ, stable-born, is now the cosmic Lord of all
creation.
I wonder - how many people in churches believe in a Jesus like this? How many
churches, believe in a Jesus like this?
You I mean, who is this guy? Listen to something Bono said in an interview a few years
ago:
I see it like this: the largeness of the Christ we follow will determine the largeness or
smallness of his power in our lives.
A little Jesus yields a little faith that provides little strength or courage or comfort
or power.
And a tame safe Jesus yields tame, safe Christians who come together into a tame,
safe church that does nothing to change lives and change the world.

That kind of Jesus doesnt produce people like those who endured Domitians
persecution and who changed the Roman Empire.
So - how big a Jesus do you and I believe in? How big a Jesus does our church
believe in and teach and preach?
Jesus Christ is the Alpha (the first word)
In vs. 8, and at the end of Revelation, the Lord says, I am the Alpha and the Omega.
I had to memorize the Greek alphabet in seminary - some of you had to do it too when
you joined a fraternity or sorority - where is Alpha in order of Greek alphabet? Alpha and
the Omega - at the beginning and end of all things - like brackets - these letters enclose
everything.
Meaning first, Jesus Christ is the first of all things - that he is the one through whom the
universe was created - and the one through whom you and I were created.
And this tells us who we really are.
Because thats a question were pretty desperate to answer; one that frequently baffles us.
One way we try to answer that question is by finding out more about our ancestry. Maybe
youve heard of the website Ancestry.com, a genealogy research website with over 2
million subscribers, how they introduced a $99 DNA to create a map of users' ethnic
backgrounds and uncover biological relationships between people.
There is in every family, to different degrees, interest in the idea of
understanding who we are and where we come from, says Tim Sullivan,
Ancestry's CEO.3
Our son Peter has begun a family tree for us and there are big blank spots on both sides of
my family - Susan and I are going to Scotland this summer in part to learn more about my
mothers ancestry - she was a MacKenzie who grew up in Scotland and emigrated here.
I feel a hole in my identity because I dont know my ancestry - my origins. But we cant
finally understand ourselves, and anchor our worth in anything at all, unless we
understand our starting point. And weve got two main choices here:
Maybe we are a just a random assemblage of atoms and molecules that somehow
managed to clump together for a brief time in the midst of a vast and cold
universe, an assemblage of atoms and molecules that will one day decay back into
their constituent parts. And if that is true - you have no real worth; you are just
intelligent meat. And in the long run...nothing you do will last or matter. And
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suffering has no meaning.

Or - the gospel says Jesus Christ intended you to be. You were in Gods mind
before the universe banged into being. You come from the maker of all things
who loves and wants you and says you are my child, who says nothing in all
creation can separate you from my love. Not the tragedies of life, not the cruelty
of other people. Nobody can take away your worth. Nobody can strip you of the
dignity Jesus Christ gives you. And suffering, when it comes, God transforms
into your glory.
As a child and adolescent, I was very sad. I was overly large, overweight, uncoordinated,
shy, lacked confidence, had glasses, was anxious and slow-witted. When I was in school
with my peers, I was like blood in the water to sharks. I couldnt name or speak about
what how worthless I felt; I felt defective, and profoundly alone. And all these years later
- a flash of memory can take me right back there.
And I can see the same pain in children and youth today - if there are thirty of them in a
group, I can immediately spot the one who feels lost and alone and worthless. And when
I do - I try to tell them about the Jesus in this passage - the Jesus who is the magnificent
Lord of All - the Jesus who had a hand in creating that child, whose worth and value is
rooted in the cosmic Lord rather than the taunts and cruelty of their peers or the
indifference of their family. I want them to know, what I did not. Because when I
realized that I was loved by THIS Jesus, it changed my life.
Jesus Christ is the Omega (the last word)
Jesus Chris is the FIRST word about us, and the LAST word too. About the whole
creation!
The alternative to believing in Chris as the last word was expressed well by Woody Allen
in an interview:
Q- Some say your view is that life is pointless, and others say you're a romantic
realist who believes in being true to yourself. Which is it?
A - I think that's the best you can do, but the true situation is a hopeless one
because nothing does last. If we reduce it absurdly for a moment, you know the
sun will burn out. You know the universe is falling apart at a fantastically
accelerating rate and that at some point there won't be anything at all. So whether
you are Shakespeare or Beethoven or Michelangelo, your stuff's not going to last.
So, given that, even if you were immortal, that time is going to come. Of course,
you have to deal with a much more critical problem, which is that you're not going
to last microscopically close to that. So, nothing does last. You do your things.
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One day some guy wakes up and gets the Times and says, "Hey, Woody Allen
died. He keeled over in the shower singing. So, where do you want to have lunch
today?"4
If there is no God, Woody is right. Its all meaningless, including our suffering, and why
would you choose to suffer for anything?
But...we learn from the Word that Christ is the Omega Point - that means all history is
rushing towards him and that he stands at the end of history as Lord and Judge of all.
And that means our lives have a point, history has a point. Its not all meaningless. What
we do in this life matters.
For Johns readers, about to have the whole weight of the Roman Empire fall on them they trusted that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Omega Point, stood at the end of history and
would both judge the evil done to them, but also bring them into his glory. As Paul says
in 2 Corinthians our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory
that far outweighs them all. And they endured.
The touching Jesus
One last thing - John is so overwhelmed by the glory of the risen Jesus that he fell down,
overwhelmed by him. Jesus reached down and touched him and told him not to be afraid;
touched him with a hand still bearing the wounds of the crucifixion.
This Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, is still the Jesus who touched the leper, who held
the children and who died for us. He is here now among us, and will be with us in the
Lords Supper in a few moments. He is both majestic - and tender - he is our beginning
and our end. With him, there is nothing you cant endure. With him, you are headed for
glory unimaginable. Amen.
Endnotes
1. From a sermon by Tim Keller, The Cosmic King preached at Redeemer Presbyterian
Church, 2/8/2010.
2. Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, p. 26. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1988.
3. Geoffrey A. Fowler, Websites Use DNA to Create Family Trees, in The Wall Street Journal,
May 15, 2012.
4. Rachel Dodes, Older, Mellower But Still Woody, The Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2012.