The Glory of the Risen Jesus
Revelation 1:9-20
Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016
Sermon Transcript
Justin Langley
Easter Sunday is a personally important day for me; it’s a time that I get to reflect back on the time that God saved me from death, 19 years ago. I was baptized on Easter Sunday in 1997; the week prior to that—I think the date was March 30, on a Saturday evening—God awakened me to new life, exercised his resurrection power in the deadness of my soul and brought me to life. And so, I love Easter Sunday for all of the same reasons that you love it, and then some besides, and I’m glad to be up here sharing from the Scriptures that God used to awaken me all those years ago.
As people asked me, in the weeks leading up to this morning, what I would be preaching on on Easter Sunday, and I told them I’d be preaching from the book of Revelation, I received interesting responses—mostly raised eyebrows, blank stares, very confused looks. And I’ve reflected on why that might be, and there are probably an abundance of reasons. It’s certainly not typical or traditional for an Easter message to come from the book of Revelation, and I’m aware of that. But I wonder if so often the book of Revelation is centrally discussed in the midst of debates and conflicts about the future and about the end of history so much so that we lose sight of the actual, primary message of the book of Revelation, which is very simple. The book of Revelation is a complex book; I’m not going to stand up here and tell you it’s easy. But its primary message is quite simple, and so I’d like to take a few minutes before we get into the text this morning to share with you why I think it’s so fitting that we would open the book of Revelation this morning on Easter Sunday of all Sundays and why it’s fitting that we would spend time in it in our daily lives as well.
The book of Revelation has one primary message that I think I can summarize pretty simply in one sentence. The book of Revelation is designed by God to show you Jesus. That’s the main point. It’s to give you a picture—it’s visionary literature—of the risen king that we worship this morning, to show you Jesus. But there are two practical applications of that primary point of the book of Revelation that it’s driving for in your life. So, if you read the book of Revelation, you ought to be asking the question at every page, at every chapter, at every verse: how does this show me Jesus as he really is? And then when you answer that question, when you see that coming up out of the text, what do you do? What is the response that the book of Revelation wants you to make at every point throughout the book? And it’s very simple; it’s twofold. The book of Revelation wants to show us Jesus as he really is so that we will repent from sin and endure suffering. That’s what the book of Revelation is about, primarily and fundamentally. It wants to show us Jesus as he really is so that you and I as Christians will repent from sin and endure suffering. And I believe that’s what you and I need more than anything else this morning and every morning.
And so I’m excited to open the book of Revelation with you this morning, and I’ve been praying for you and for me that God would show us Jesus as he really is—not as we might like him to be, not as we might imagine him to be, but as he is truly, right now in heaven. And when we see him, when we see him as he really is, that is the power that comes into our lives to turn us away from our sin and to help us to endure suffering in our lives. And so, with that fundamental need on the table—that’s what you need and that’s what I need more than anything else, more than I need food, more than I need water I need to see Jesus as he really is, and that’s what you need also. And if you do see him, if you get a glimpse of him, I’m convinced that that will drive out some of the lesser desires that we are so preoccupied with in our everyday lives, and that will give us the fortitude that we need to endure the suffering of this world in all of its forms.
And so I invite you to open to Revelation chapter 1, and we’re going to open up this opening vision of the book of Revelation. If you know anything about the book of Revelation, you know that it’s composed of a series of visions. The first one given to John is in Revelation chapter 1 verses 9-20, and that’s what we’ll open up this morning. So, I’d like to begin looking at this passage, and we’ll start with verses 9-11, where John introduces himself and he shares with us how he received this message, this book, as a message from the Lord for his “partners.” So, let’s look at Revelation 1 verses 9-11: I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”
So, John introduces himself here in a way that we might not expect. I believe that this is John the apostle that we know from the Gospels. In fact, the Gospel of John seems to refer to him as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”[1] We might expect him to introduce himself that way: “I, John, the apostle….” But he doesn’t. John also wrote three letters in the New Testament, that we call First John, Second John, and Third John…unoriginally. In Second John and Third John, he introduces himself as “the elder” to these churches to whom he’s writing. But here he doesn’t do that either. Rather, he introduces himself as “your brother.” He’s wanting to level out some commonality between them; he’s wanting to highlight his connection to them, not so much his authority over them, although that’s there. He’s wanting to share with them and to show that he is sharing with them in all that they’re experiencing. He’s their brother.
And he goes on and adds this other term, “partner” to emphasize that very point. It’s a Greek word that’s related to the word koinonia; fellowship is how we often translate it. Here, it has the idea of someone who is sharing with other people—sharing resources, sharing life, sharing experiences. You see, he’s isolated from these people, these churches that he loves, these Christians that are his real family, his brothers and sisters. But he wants them to know that he is actually sharing their experiences. Even though they’re apart, they’re not in the same place, they’re going through the same things, and he wants to establish that at the beginning of this message. “I’m with you in everything that’s going on in your life right now.”
But he specifies three realities that he shares with these believers to whom he’s writing, but what we’re going to see is that they’re actually one thing. First, he says, “I am your partner in the tribulation,” partner/sharer in the tribulation. This Greek word is an important word in the New Testament; it pops up all the time throughout the New Testament, but just a few times in the book of Revelation. The physical meaning of the word has to do with pressure, something that squeezes like a vice or crushes, and it gets applied to any kind of pressure that we experience in life. We can talk about stress; they would’ve talked about tribulation. But it gets applied to all these different circumstances, whether it’s this angst that we feel internally, or it’s pressure brought on by people in power taking advantage of people without power—what we might call persecution—or oppression of any kind. Tribulation is this squeezing, this crushing of your life, and it takes all kinds of different forms. And John says, “I’m with you in your experiences of pressure and suffering and tribulation,” which is the word he uses for this.
He’s in exile; he’s been isolated from them; he’s being punished by the Roman authorities, it seems. He’s been exiled; that’s a form that this tribulation takes. But he’s writing to these Christians in Asia Minor, in these seven particular cities where Christians gather, Sunday after Sunday, to hear the word of God, just like we are this morning, and they’re experiencing this tribulation as well that takes on many different forms. John’s writing at the end of the first century under a Roman emperor named Domitian, who, at least during part of his reign, targeted Christians because they wouldn’t worship him as a god or they wouldn’t worship the Roman gods. That felt threatening for this power-hungry emperor, and so he targeted them as an enemy, and pulled down the full weight of his Roman authority to punish them, often entering their houses to take away their possessions, taking their family away, arresting them, putting them in prison, where they might be tortured, and ultimately executed under Roman authority, hanging them on crosses or cutting off their heads. And so John is wanting to tell them, “I’m with you in all of that. I’m isolated here, suffering the same tribulation that you are, and I want you to know that I’m with you, even if I’m physically distant from you. I am your partner, your sharer in this tribulation that we are going through together.”
But then he adds a word that begins to disorient us already. He says, “I am your partner in the tribulation…and the kingdom.” And of course he’s referring to the kingdom of God. And he’s saying, “Right now, I am a partner with you in the kingdom of God”—the kingdom that Jesus brought into this world when he came into this world because he is the king. Where the king goes, so goes the kingdom. And so Jesus brings his authority into this world in the incarnation; when he comes and lives in this world as a man, he is coming as the human king, the true king that God had always designed for humanity to sit under. He brings the kingdom, and so now John is saying, “We are truly citizens of that kingdom right now…even as we go through this tribulation; even as we suffer in this world, we are truly citizens of the kingdom of God.”[2] And he reminds them of that up front; he wants them to remember who they are; we are sharers together in the privileges of the kingdom of God. We are the citizens of the kingdom of God. That citizenship is more important than your Roman citizenship, or your American citizenship, or your Texan citizenship, since we’re so very proud of that. As Christians, we ought to recognize that our citizenship in heaven is more important than any earthly citizenship that we have, and John wants to remind them of that right up front: “Your identity is rooted in the true king, in your connection to him.”
And so we together are partners, sharers together in the kingdom, even as we suffer tribulation. You see, the tribulation and the kingdom go together. That’s not something that they would have expected; that’s not something we expect. But the Bible tells us plainly—the New Testament is very plain on this point—the kingdom of God and the tribulation in this world go together. Jesus said, the night before he died, “In the world you will have tribulation, but…I have overcome the world”[3]; and he’s saying, “I have overcome the world as king! I have won the royal victory.” And he does that through the cross and the resurrection. And so now, his followers, his subjects—we are subjects of the King of Kings—now, we live in this world, experiencing tribulation every day in a variety of forms, but that doesn’t deny our citizenship as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. That’s who we really are, no matter what happens to us, no matter what form tribulation takes—whether it be cancer that eats away our body, whether it be the government raining down prohibitions on us to preach the gospel or to meet openly, as it so often does in many countries, or whether people come in and kill us with guns—we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. You see, the tribulation and the kingdom can go together because the tribulation ends; the tribulation has an end date, a certain end date, but the kingdom of God has no end date; it will never end! So, even as we experience the turmoil and the tension of tribulation and kingdom, we know and we can have hope that the kingdom will never end; the tribulation will end.
And so, he starts here, to encourage this point of enduring suffering. Why should we endure? Because tribulation will end; the kingdom will never end. So, let’s endure. And so, he highlights right here at the very beginning, and he adds that very point. See it again here: “I am your partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance.” If tribulation and kingdom are going to be going on at the same time, that calls us out to respond with patient endurance. When we face suffering of any kind—bodily, the oppression of enemies or evil governments—the call on us is to patiently endure suffering. And John puts that here first, but notice also what he adds here; he adds the phrase, “that are in Jesus.” You see, the tribulation is in Jesus; the kingdom is in Jesus; and the patient endurance is in Jesus. And as Christians, our fundamental identity is that we are in Jesus, in Christ, and so our identity is wrapped up in being connected to him. What did he experience in his life, if not tribulation, even as he was the king? Tribulation and kingdom, he experienced both of those in his own earthly ministry. How did he deal with it? He patiently endured…all the way to the cross, all the way to death, and thereby, paradoxically, winning the victory over his enemies. And so, if Jesus the king experienced tribulation and kingdom all at the same time, we as his followers should expect nothing different.[4] Didn’t he call us to take up our crosses when he called us to follow him? Didn’t he call us to die? Isn’t it Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said, “The call to discipleship is a call to die”?[5]And so it is. We endure suffering, we endure tribulation because we’re citizens of the kingdom, because we’re in Christ. Paul used a similar phrase; he encouraged us to share in the sufferings of the Messiah,[6] and that’s exactly what John is picturing here, and he’s highlighting his continuity with these churches in Asia Minor. “I’m in exile; I’m isolated from you, but I’m experiencing the same suffering that you are, even as I experience the same relationship with the king that you do.” And so that’s where he starts this letter; that’s how he introduces himself, in the midst of this message that is to be given to these seven churches. “We are partners together in this.”And so these three phrases—the tribulation, the kingdom, and the patient endurance—are all one thing. They’re really describing the normal Christian life. The normal Christian life is the life in Jesus that’s characterized by tribulation, the benefits of the kingdom of God at the same time, and our response of patient endurance in the midst of it all.[7]
And so he then tells about his circumstances when he receives this message: “I was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” He had been exiled, it seems, for preaching the gospel.[8] Now, when we read that, we often think that the Roman government has come in and isolated John because he’s making converts, right? He’s taking Roman citizens and turning them into Christians who don’t worship the Roman gods, who don’t live the Roman way anymore. And that’s true, to be sure, but I think there’s something else going on here. You see, John is involved with these seven churches that he writes to here.
You can see them up on a map; they’re listed in this order, and we’ll come back to the sequence there in just a second. But John has had dealings with these churches. Think about it: he’s probably an old man by now. He’s probably been ministering among these churches for 30 or 40 years by this point. And so, I think more of what might be going on here is that John, this elder, is presenting a threat to the Roman authorities because he is strengthening these churches. He is building them up by his continued preaching of the gospel, week in and week out, to these believers. Yes, he’s making converts, but more than that, he’s encouraging these believers in Asia Minor to keep on resisting the oppression of the Roman government, and to say, “Don’t conform! Hold fast to Jesus!”
And so the Roman authorities are looking at this and saying, “They are strong because of this old man continuing his ministry in their midst. We must eliminate his influence, if we’re ever going to stamp out this Christian movement.” So, they perceive this old man having this power, but they won’t kill him because that would just make him a martyr, a hero in that sense. And so they say, “I know how to fix him: let’s take him away, let’s isolate him from the churches; let’s exile him on the island of Patmos, and then the churches will die because we’ve taken their leader away.” I hope you can begin to see the irony. John is exiled on the island of Patmos, where God gives him this. The Roman governor says, “I know what will eliminate John and his influence in strengthening the Christians: let’s isolate him, let’s exile him to the island of Patmos.” God gives him the book of Revelation that becomes Scripture, that initially is sent out to these seven churches and served to build them up evermore because it’s God’s very Word.[9] And then beyond that, 2,000 years later we’re being built up by this same book! I love it when we can see how God takes what is evil and wicked—the Roman governor trying to eliminate an elder of the church—and turns it for exponentially beyond what ever could have been imagined, good and benefits. This is an example of that very thing.