Revelation chapter one again. So over the course of the past year and a half, I looked, it's been almost a year and a half now, we've committed ourselves to the study of this final book or final letter in God's word that is known called the Revelation of Jesus Christ. And having done so, I want us to consider, do we believe what we have studied? Do we believe what we have seen? Do we believe what we have studied? And if so, then let us also consider how then is this revelation, this letter, this last book in God's word, how is this, the truth that we have seen and studied, how is it affecting our lives? This is a real question that we need to ask ourselves individually. Is what we have learned, out of this particular book, is it affecting our life? Has it had an effect and is it having an effect on our lives? And I can say that to us, I can ask that question with authority. I can ask it with assurance because God actually tells us that it will. He tells us it will. God tells us that the content of this letter, the book of Revelation, that it should affect our thinking, and it should affect our living, and for that matter, it should even affect our dying. We just came through the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, so we should all know what a Beatitude is. It is a promise of God that is meant to shape our mind, our thinking, our attitudes. When we look at the Beatitude, that ought to be our attitude. That should be our attitude. And actually, it's even more than that. It is a promise that through a Godward attitude and through the attitude that is expressed to us in scripture, it is a promise that through this Godward attitude that we will find true happiness or true blissfulness. Even it's even it's even greater than just happiness. It's actually blissfulness. That's what a beatitude is, that's what a beatitude does through our, as it is effect, as we look and learn and see what it says, as those things become our attitudes, we find true happiness in those things. And actually, we should know there are seven of these beatitudes in this letter of Revelation. The first here is in chapter one. Let's look at it. Let's begin in chapter one and verse one. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to shoo, to declare unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. And he sent and signify it by his angel unto his servant, John. who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he, here's the beatitude, blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein because the time is at hand. So you see, not only is this book, this letter, a revelation of Jesus Christ, but because it is a revelation of Jesus Christ, it is also the revelation of true happiness. That's what it is. If we read and study and hear and keep the things that are in the book, we will find blessedness, we will find blissfulness, we will find true happiness. And we should know this as well. The same promise, the same beatitude is not only found here in the first chapter, but the same beatitude is found again in the last chapter. Look over in chapter 22. Chapter 22, verse 6. We'll begin in verse 6. The beatitude is actually in verse 7. Verse 6, And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true. And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. And you would notice there, if you do a comparison study between the two, that both of these beatitudes say exactly the same thing. They both give us the promise of true happiness. Both of them say, blessed is he. They both give us the same contingency of this happiness, reading, hearing, and the keeping of the prophecies of this book, chapter 22. We just read doesn't mention the reading and the hearing, but it's implied in the keeping. To keep it, you'll have to read it. You'll have to hear it. This keeping is the guarding or the taking unto oneself the truth. that is read and heard and proclaimed from the mouth of God. That's what this to keep means or it means to guard. It means to believe and know it and live it as your own truth. That's what it is to keep the prophecies of this book, to believe, to hear, hear it proclaimed, read it for yourself, study it, and then believe it, know it, and live it as your own truth with the understanding that we're reminded of in both Beatitudes, the first and the last one, that the time is near. Christ is coming soon. You see, they both say the exactly same thing, both these Beatitudes. So I briefly for a moment this afternoon want to point out just three things three reasons why this promise is true. Now, we've already studied through the book, so I pray we've already really realized these three things in our own mind, in our own lives. And as we consider these three things, you should know, I'm not just pulling these out of thin air, these three things can be realized by the placement of them in the text. They can be realized by the repetition of the text, of the truth. They can be realized by the content of the text. And what I meant by placement is the position of this letter in time, in history, and even in God's Word. So three things. First, Why will we find true happiness? Why do we have this guarantee, this promise of true happiness when we read and hear and keep the truth, the words of this letter? Number one, because we won't be deceived by this present age. We will be happy, we will have this blissfulness from God Because upon reading and hearing and keeping, guarding the things that are written in this, and we're just talking about this one letter, the last book in God's word, the book of Revelation, which has this preface like no other letter, no other book in God's word. We will not be deceived by this present age. By the time that these letters were delivered to these seven churches, you remember, it all begins with them. The seven churches in Asia, By the time these letters were delivered to them near the close of the first century, somewhere between 90 and 99 AD, the Lord's churches had already seen a lot in those first hundred years. They had already suffered a lot. We can see a lot of that in the letters themselves that we have read and studied over. So even in the first hundred years, they've already seen a lot, they've already suffered a lot, but then you think about us, 2,000 years later, the Lord's churches have seen and suffered even much more. And you know, when we begin something, there's kind of like a honeymoon period, if you will. You all know what I'm talking about. When we're first beginning, when we're first starting out something, there is this period where enthusiasms and expectations are very high. They're so high that almost nothing can dash our hopes. But when time progresses, and life happens, and pressures are applied, hopes can begin to diminish. Elapsed time and pressures, maybe unexpected pressures, can make us forget and maybe even regret the reasons we began. I mean, the members of these churches, these first churches that received this letter had started out with their eyes towards heaven. They had started out setting their minds on things above with this great expectation, the blessed hope of the soon return of their Savior. But even here, as these letters were delivered to them, a lot of time had gone by. and life had continued and pressures had been applied. And the age around them and the many that opposed them and their savior, they began to say, oh, y'all over there living for this savior. The things that you do, the things that you're doing, the things you're saying, living for this, this quote unquote savior who who said he's coming for you. Don't you get it? He's not coming for you. Where is he? Where is he? You really think that you could just hear him say you really think that all these wild things that you're telling us about that they're going to come true that that he's going to come in the clouds and and rapture you out of this world. Come on. And we know this is true because Peter, years before this letter was written, recorded their scoffing for us. In 2 Peter 3, he says they will say this, where is the promise of his coming? Where is he? Where is he? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. Everything's the same. Where is he coming? You keep telling us he's gonna come. And he's gonna come in the clouds great glory or the rapture, not so much with great glory, but they would tell him about that, too. And he's going to rapture you. And then all of these other things are going to happen. Where where is he? Everything looks just the same. And sure enough. The coming of Christ might even say might even seem like that way to us, too, like an impossibility, like like maybe when we hear about the coming of Christ, we may think of it more like a fairy tale, something we have always heard, too. Something that the fathers had always been saying the whole time that we'd been alive and well before even our life. And in the experience of life, we get up in the morning with the same sun in the same place in the east. It's just another day, the grass, we walk outside, the grass is the same, the trees are the same. You walk around people, people are the same. Everything seems so regular and so routine. So how can all of these things be that we have studied in this last letter? How can all of these things come to pass, really happen? Well, then the Lord sends this letter and he gives us this beatitude and he says this in essence, listen, this book, This letter, like no other book in God's Word, this letter, you really want to pay attention to this. You really want to become well acquainted with the things that are in this book, and you need to read it, and you need to hear it, and you guard what you read and hear. You guard these things. Don't let the ridicule and the deception of the age around you take these things away. Don't let them dismiss these things from you because, he tells us, I'm faithful and true. I'm faithful and true and this, this last book that we've been studying for the last year and a half, this is true. Everything is not always going to be the same. There's coming a day and days when all that the Lord has written and all that we have been studying will be reality. It will be just as he's declared. The whole purpose of me beginning this series the way I did back over in the Old Testament, looking at some of the other prophecies was so that we could see how he fulfills prophecy. And He fulfills them exactly as He has declared them. And you know what? In the days of these prophets, there were scoffers then that said, oh, there ain't no way that that's going to come true. And it came true exactly as they prophesied. Stunningly exactly as they prophesied. Isaiah named the name of the man for whom the nation of Israel would be delivered out of Babylonian exile. He named the man hundreds of years before the man was even thought about, Cyrus. A man, not a likely man, to deliver the Jews and not only let them, but fund the rebuilding of the temple and the wall in Israel, but that is exactly what happened. Oh, there were scoffers then, too. They scoffed at Isaiah, they scoffed at Jeremiah, they scoffed at Ezekiel. Scoffing is a light word. They did a lot more than that. There were unbelievers then, too. There were those that were laughing and saying, oh, that can't be. But yet all these things came to pass exactly as God had proclaimed, exactly as he had promised And here's the thing, I hope you picked it up as we progress through this book. You know what he keeps saying through this book? Especially in the last chapter, it accelerates. He says this, I am coming. I am coming. I am coming. He's coming. The Lord Jesus Christ is coming. and we need to believe him. You know, if we read and study, I know that's my experience, I hope it's yours too, as I read and study and try to heed the truths of this letter, I almost, I can forget that it's been 2,000 years since these things were declared, can't you? Because I can feel, I can feel myself and ourselves in the text. I feel that the Lord is speaking to us just like he was these first churches. The importance is still there. The immediacy of what he has declared is still there. 2,000 years later, it's still there. You can feel the truth of God's word upon the pages. We can feel it on ourselves. We can understand, we can know. Listen, God's not dead. He's not dead and he hasn't forgotten. Oh yes, it's been 2,000 years, but time is nothing with our God. He is eternal. He tells us in His Word that one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day, so it's been like two days since He's gone. Maybe a little more than that. The truth is we have absolutely no reason to listen or fall into the deception of this age. But we have absolutely every reason to believe that our God and our Savior, that He is faithful and true. And He's not even, He's not forgotten us, He's not forsaken us. Listen, He's not even delayed His coming. He's not. He's right on time. He's right on schedule. And He is more than able to do everything that He has promised and everything that He has purposed. He is more than able to fulfill every word of this last letter to the T. Listen, church, I'm expecting him to fulfill this to the T. I'm expecting, by the Lord's grace, I've studied enough prophecy, earlier prophecies, and I can see how he, how faithful he is to what he has said. That's what it's really about. Prophecy is just God's declaration. And our God is faithful. And I'm looking to see when these things begin to unfold, we're gonna be able to see and say, that's what he said. That's, he's doing this. This is what's happening. If we become students and stalwarts of this book, if we read, heed, hear, and keep this book, this letter, we will find true happiness because we won't be deceived by the deception of the scoffers of this present age. Listen, what the world around us believes The scoffers around us believe there's no happiness in that. That this life is all you got. And this life and this world is all that there is. There's nothing but futility in it. There's nothing. Does that make you happy? Is the life that you've led, is it enough? Is it enough to satisfy you, to fulfill you? Or do you, are you like me, you see the failures of the life that you've led? The inadequacies of the life that you've led? Do you feel in your very bones that there has to be more than just the life that we live on a physical level? There has to be. There is. There is, and we have it in God's word. He has declared to us what it is, and there is true happiness to be found there. And as well, the reason we will find true happiness in the faithful studying and following of this book number two, not only will we not be deceived by this present age, but upon the reading and hearing and heeding of this, even this particular letter, that's not to mention the rest of God's word, just this particular book, the book of Revelation, we won't be discouraged in this present world. We will not be deceived by this present age, but we won't be discouraged in and by this present world. This letter is the revelation, or literally that word means unveiling, of the present reality of the person of Jesus Christ. And there is one thing clearly revealed about him in this book. There is a God, and it is him. He is him. He is God, and He is the God who is God. He is in absolute control. It may be more than one thing, but it all goes in one box. Jesus Christ is God. He is the person of God. God manifests to man, and He is in absolute control. Absolute control. about your life and everything about this world and every detail about you. He is in control of you are sitting here this afternoon. We are, are, are in this building because he is in control. He is ruling and governing our lives. Every detail of our lives. There is nothing, not only unhit, nothing hid from him, but there is nothing that he does not have absolute control over. Nothing. Let us not understand. His sovereignty does not dismiss us from our duties as citizens of this world. It does not dismiss us from duties as citizens of our nation. It does not dismiss us from the duties as citizens of his kingdom. But oh, isn't his sovereignty a comfort? Isn't his sovereign rule over our lives and over everything that there is, knowing that the Lord, our God, he is God and that he rules every detail and nothing is hid from him and nothing is out of his power and nothing is out of control. Isn't that a comfort? I'm telling you, it is. It is a great, great comfort. Here's the thing, Saints, we don't have to worry about tomorrow. Matter of fact, we're commanded not to worry about tomorrow. All we have to do is be faithful today. Just be faithful today. Be faithful in the position and the offices that the Lord has placed your life in. Be faithful to him. Be faithful to love him. Be faithful to obey his word. Be faithful in doing that to love others. Be faithful to him. We don't have to worry about tomorrow. Just be faithful to him today. We see wickedness and wicked and the wicked themselves prevailing all around us, but we're not to despair. If you see that, don't despair, saints. Is it out here? Is there wickedness everywhere and are the wicked prevailing? Yes, seemingly anyway, but don't despair because we We have God's word, the Apostle Paul, for instance, he's already told us, he's already warned us that the evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse. He's already told us that in the last days, perilous times shall come. And even the Lord Jesus preached and warned us, you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, see that you be not troubled. Don't worry, don't be discouraged, for all of these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. The nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows, Jesus said. We see these things taking place all around us, but then we read this book, the book of Revelation. And we can actually see that the downward decline of the world system will actually usher in this coming age. It must come to pass. Do we understand that? It must come to pass for this to come to pass. The warnings are all there. The Lord said, don't worry, don't be discouraged. This will all come to pass. This must come to pass for this to come to pass. I'm not saying be reckless. I'm not saying being disobedient to the duties and unfaithful to the duties that have been discharged to us. I'm not saying that. Don't think I'm saying that. But in our hearts and hearts, as we live faithfully to God and to his word, we don't have to worry. When we see wickedness all around us and the wicked prevailing, we don't have to worry. We understand God's word. We understand God's plan. He's revealed it to us. All of these things, this wickedness must come. It must come. Listen, Christ is going to come to an earth. When he comes, the earth will be absolutely filled with corruption and evil. The earth will be absolutely filled with the prevailing, seemingly prevailing, of wickedness. The more we see, really, the more wickedness we see, the more assurance we have of His soon coming. I know, for example, I know we are concerned about our own nation. We were talking about it at lunchtime, we should be. America was once a beacon of the gospel, a refuge of the truth. And now we too are going the way of the rest of the world. I mean, let's just face it, you can start over in the Middle East where it all began. You come to Europe, you come to Britain, cross the sea, come down to America. We too are going the way of the rest of the world. It seems we too now, as well, this last great frontier, if you will, that we too, the Lord has given us over to our own reprobate minds. I mean, we are living under a very stark example of this, apart from the Lord's mercy, if this will bear out to be true. We live in a, we are living under a representative form of government, a government of the people, of the people, whose people, citizens, have chosen two presidential candidates this year that neither one of them would know the truth if it hit them in the forehead, let alone say the truth. All you have to do is listen to the last week's debate, okay? It was like two 12-year-olds. This is the way it is. Concerned? Yeah, we need to be absolutely. Wondering how in the world we should vote? Wondering how in the world even this election will run out for the future of our nation? Yeah, we should be concerned about that, but not discouraged. Not discouraged, because I've read this book, haven't you? And this I know, there's something in this book about America. In the book of Revelation, there's something about America. Nothing. I think we can gather from the book, sometimes you can gather by silent things, and you can, as much as what you hear, If there even still is an America in these days, it will certainly, America will certainly not be the center of the universe, and America will certainly not be the center of political or economic power. It's just not there. It's not there. Now, does that spell pain and suffering for us and our children and our grandchildren in America? It may. It may. But saints, God has not and will, He has not and will not lose control. He will not. He will not forget, nor will he forsake his people. He will not forget, nor will he forsake his churches. And I will add this, if our true desire is for true Christlikeness, true godliness, true holiness, like we talked about this morning, for ourselves and for our offspring, if history proves anything to us, It tells us that God uses times of pain and suffering and leanness and opposition and persecutions to produce in us and to bring forth from us true godliness. That may be the reason we're in such a shape in the land of the free today. Maybe the reason those churches are in such a shape. to where they would rather have their own ideas than God's Word, is that we've not seen enough persecution, pain, suffering. How am I? Am I promoting and looking forward to those things? No. No. But God will not lose control. Whatever may come, God will not lose control. There is absolutely no reason for you, Saint of God, to be discouraged by this present evil world. Just read this book, this little book of Revelation. Study this book and delight in the Christ, the all-glorious Christ, who is God over all. And He is your God. If He is your God, He is your God. And you are safe within His hands. Even if it means dying a martyr, you are safe within His hands. He will never leave us or forsake us. I've been reading the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, which most of their prophecies are about the Babylonian exile of Israel, which began about, you should note this, about 500 B.C. That's when the exile, give or take, began. took three waves to actually end up collecting the Jews they would remove and then the destruction of Jerusalem. So it began in about 500 BC, and that's what most of the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel dealt with, the destruction, the exile, the destruction of the temple, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and then the restoration of the nation of Israel. But here's the thing that we need to understand. Do you know that to this very day, right here today, there are aspects of the exile of Israel still in play? Still in play. It's amazing when you study those books, you realize it. It's really amazing when you study that along with Matthew, you really realize it. There are aspects of that exile that happened thousands of years ago that are still being moved along right now. Because as you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, they talk about the exile, they talk about everything that actually did happen, and again, the fulfillment of it is just amazing. They said this hundreds of years before it came to pass, and it came to pass exactly as they prophesied. But the thing about it is they also talk about something else much, a lot. We've actually, in this study, we've referred to it. They talk about the restoration of Israel. That restoration has not happened yet. That restoration has not happened. Here's the thing, though. I just read the prophecies of Ezekiel against the surrounding nations of Israel who laughed and celebrated at Israel's destruction from King Nebuchadnezzar, and their exile being carried away out of their nation. They laughed and made fun of it, they celebrated it. And the Lord then prophesied against them, against the nations of Ammon, Moab, Phylicia, Edom, Tyre, Sidon. I'll give you a little homework assignment for this next week. Go and find these nations on a modern map. And I'll give you a hint, you won't find them. None of them. You know why? Because God prophesied that he would totally destroy them. And he has. And he did it just like he prophesied. He did it by the hand of those he prophesied that he would do it. All along saying, they are like my sword. They are the sword in my own hand. But here on that map, there's something that you will find. a little nation called Israel. And you will find them once again, now, today, right now, returning to their land. And here in this book of Revelation, we see this return. We see the establishment of them in the land that God originally gave Abraham and promised Abraham. We see them in this book, at the end of this book, we see them not only in that land, but we see them under the king, ruled by the king who originally ruled them. You know who that was? King Jesus. He originally ruled them. God himself. You remember, he said, Samuel, He told Samuel, he said, they're not rejecting you, Samuel, they're rejecting me. They want a king like the other nations. Inferring that they had a king, the king of all kings, but they didn't want him. But at the end of this book, who's ruling them? Who are they bowing to? Who are they subject to? The king who originally ruled them. And we see it finalized, we see it completed, we see it fulfilled, we see it forevermore. But here's this. It's been thousands of years since the exile into Babylonia. But it's just been time. It's just been time, and time is nothing to our God. Time is nothing to Him. God, He is in control and He has never failed. He has never been delayed. He has not even ever been challenged. He said, I am God and there is none else. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, declaring from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. We see in this glorious book, this book that God says, you need to pay attention to this. We see him fulfilling everything that he has promised, everything down to the smallest detail. He is God and there is none like him. Everything that He has promised and purposed, He will bring to pass. Will it take time? Sometimes in the process of time and pressures applied, we forget, we might regret that we even begun this journey. That's the reason God says, hey, hey, you need to get in this book, this last book. You need to read it and you need to heed it because I'm coming. Now, speaking of which. The third reason. That the reading and hearing and heeding of this book will produce true happiness. Is because you will not be dismayed at Christ's coming, you won't be deceived by the present evil age, you won't be discouraged by the present evil world. nor will you be dismayed at Christ's coming. When we hear the trumpet sound, it's not going to be a surprise, is it? No, not for us who have read and studied and are heeding the promises of this book. Not only will the trumpet sounding not to surprise us, but even more so, neither will the glory and the preeminence and the supremacy of our coming King. Christ began and ended this letter by saying, you need to be sure that you read and study and believe this book. It will be it will it will provide true happiness. And here's why, because you will see me. As I am. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, right? You will see me unveiled. You will see me as I am presently right now. You will see me in this book in all my glory and then you will be prepared. You will be prepared. Because I'm coming. And I'm coming soon. That's what he's saying. So. We've heard. Our coming king, or have we? Have we heard our coming king? Have we realized this promise of the happiness that will be given to us through the reading and studying and heeding of this book? Are we prepared for his coming? We're not deceived by the present age or discouraged by the present evil world, but we are looking, we are expecting, we are longing for the coming of this Christ. Have you seen him? Do you know what he looks like? Do you know his mind? It's here, it's here. If you haven't gotten it through this study, you go back through it. If you have questions, you come to me. Let's make sure we understand. We need to know him so that we are not surprised, we are not dismayed. We won't be dismayed like the nations of Isaiah 52, 15. He said, so shall he startle many nations. Talking about its coming. The king shall shut their mouths at him for, listen to what it says, for that which had not been told them shall they see. And that which they had not heard shall they consider. He's going to startle many. Many are going to be surprised. Why? Because they had not seen him and they had not heard of him. But that won't be us, will it? We'll know him, won't we? Because we have been told. We have heard. And we will read and we will hear and we will heed and we will keep the words of this book. If we pay attention to what these attitudes that Christ is declaring to us, he is our king. And he is the true Christ. The Christ of this book is the true Christ, the triune God, and he's the sum and the substance of this letter. So I know we have indeed, we've read it and we've heard it. But we must consider for ourselves now, are we heeding? Are we keeping the words, the truth that we have read and heard? What effect is this truth, or is this just something that we've come and we've listened to and we say, hey, that's something else, and then it never affects our life? That's not what the book's for. It's to be read and heard and kept, guarded as our truth, as our truth. So are we living like He, the true, present, all-glorious, almighty, worthy Christ, is about to come? Is that how we're living? Like He is about to come. Like, are we living like this? The culmination of all things is here. Because it is. It's here. Are we living this truth? We need to consider that. Because the promise of the beatitude is that there is true happiness to be found there. We need true happiness. We don't need the happiness that this world offers and then we find out that there's not much happiness and there's not any happiness there. It might be a temporary satisfaction, but there's not any lasting joy there. But there is here. Our God's promised it to us. If we will read, we will study, we will heed. what he has said. We will find true happiness in this book. We won't be deceived by the present evil age. We won't be discouraged by the present evil world. And we won't be dismayed. We won't be surprised when we see the king of kings, the king of all glory coming for us. May the Lord use his Holy Spirit to etch his word, this word, the writings of this last book upon our hearts and lives this very day for Christ's sake. Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand.