Revelation 1 verse 7 through 18. These are God's words. 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. Even so, amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet, saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. And what you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Theotera, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and 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. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven stars, out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was like the sun, shining in its strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying to me, Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of death. So far the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. We find out very quickly why we so urgently need the book of Revelation. And that is we need Jesus revealed to us now by his word and spirit so that our hearts will respond rightly to the glory of Christ and the kingdom of Christ, prophethood and priesthood of Christ and the judgment of Christ because He is indeed coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him. Acts 1 9 tells us that He disappeared into a cloud. And he himself said in Matthew 24, verse 30, that he was coming on the clouds. And when he disappeared, and when the cloud hid him from their sight, received him from their sight, in Acts 1, verse 9, remember the angel said, he would return in like manner. And so all will see him. You will see him. And particularly, all who deserve his wrath, and even those who very specifically have pierced him. Verse seven, those who have rejected him, whether those of his own particular generation who literally called for his death, or even those who have rejected him in his preaching, have rejected the preaching of the ministers who are described in verse 20 as the seven stars, the messengers, the preachers of the seven churches are the seven stars and the seven stars are in his hand, verse 16. And so the preaching, the word, the sword that comes out of his mouth, comes especially by means of the preaching. And so even those who pierced him is especially for those who have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. But everyone, everyone needs him, needs to come to him and be forgiven by him and through him. For Jesus is the Lord God, the creator. He is the one the knowledge of whom we reject if we see all that he has made and if we know in our hearts that he has made us, and yet we refuse to glorify God or give him thanks, that God, whom we must glorify and give thanks, has especially revealed to himself in and as the Lord Jesus Christ. This we see in verse eight, where we see who Christ is, When he identifies himself, he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. This is the Lord God who says this, verse eight, and he repeats it again, verse 11. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Now these two things are said by the Lord Jesus. But what they match in verse four is the place given to the father. You remember in verses four and five, you have this triune greeting. Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And then from the seven spirits, the sevenfold spirit, so the Holy Spirit, and then from Jesus Christ, And so it is especially the father in verse four who is and who was and who is to come. And now it is Jesus who is and who was and who is to come. Which is to say, Jesus does not depend upon the father for his existence. He is of one nature with the father and equal in power and glory. always being begotten of the Father, but there's no sense of dependence there. There is absolute and total equality. And not only then is He God, but He is the origin of all of history, the Alpha, and the goal, the purpose, the end of all of history, the Omega. So he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And so when we see him and we see that this is true about him, each of us will realize that our life has not been about us so much as it has been about Jesus Christ. and who you are and the analysis of what your life has been will be determined in how you have related to the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says that he is the beginning and the end. He means, among other things, that all of history is his story and all of your story is his story. your own life, each of you, is about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are three great ways that we know him as our mediator, the Christ, and that is, as we usually say, prophet, priest, and king, but we consider them here, king, prophet, and priest. First of all, Jesus is King. He is the Almighty, the All-Powerful One, as verse eight says. His people are in tribulation now, just as John was in tribulation. And those to whom he wrote as his brothers and companions, he wrote to them as their brother and companion in the tribulation, of Jesus Christ, but it's not just the tribulation. They have trouble, but they're also in the kingdom. He is their brother and companion in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And since the kingdom of Jesus Christ comes unstoppably, all mightily, he is their brother and companion in the patience of Jesus Christ. When Christians encounter trouble, we must be patient. because the kingdom has come and is surely coming in all of its fullness. Jesus is king and Jesus is also prophet. The Lord's day in verse 10 is not the day of the Lord, which we read about in various other places. Here is one of the two times in the New Testament that the root for Lord is actually presented not as a possessive noun in order to be an adjective, but in an adjectival form of its own. The other place is Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 20. And so there's a strong emphasis on his propriety in the day, like we are thinking about in our catechism answer this week. So on his day, by his spirit, he gives his word through his apostle to his churches. His apostle says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. What you see, write it. in a book and send it to the seven churches. And then he says later in next week's passage, write the things which you have seen, the mystery of the seven stars, which you saw in my right hand, The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. And so we see something in marvelous form here. The Lord Jesus on his day by his spirit through his apostle sending his word to his churches on the lips of their preachers in the book, but also on the lips. That still happens every Lord's day, doesn't it? where the Lord Jesus, by the words that he has given through his apostle and the book that has been sent, holding the preachers, the stars of the churches, in his hands addresses the churches in the preaching of the word. Jesus is the prophet of the New Testament. It's not like there were all these prophets and then there's the great prophet Jesus and now there are other prophets like Moses and Elijah. Preachers today are not like Moses, Elijah, et cetera. Preachers today are those through whom the sword that comes from Jesus's mouth is wielded. And so there is a great weightiness that ought to be assigned to how we receive the word preached from a faithful preacher, from one who is held in the hand of Jesus. So he is our king and he is our prophet. but he is also our priest. We see that in the fact that he is going around among the lampstands. This is an image, of course, from the holy place, where was the golden lampstand. And the high priest, originally Aaron in Leviticus 24, 1 through 4, one of his great duties, one of the things that he spent a lot of time doing, was tending to and caring for the lampstands. Now Jesus does this priestly work in his kingly glory. This kingly glory is being exercised and displayed and employed in his priestly work. Now the images that are given here or the The image here is not something that is for trying to picture, but communicating that it is something that we are entirely unable to picture. And one of the reasons we know that is, of course, first of all, because Jesus is the second person of the Godhead. And when he became flesh and they beheld his glory, It was glorious of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. There were many who saw exactly what his physical appearance was and did not see his glory. And so we shouldn't make pictures of him. But also, these particular parts of the picture given here are actually from descriptions of God, the Ancient of Days, and the one like the Son of Man in the Book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 7 and Daniel chapter 10, in which at first, if you read the Book of Daniel in those chapters, you might think that those are two different beings. And then, by the time you get to Revelation chapter 1, we should already know that they are two persons of the one being, the triune God. and aspects of both then are included together here. So Daniel chapter seven, verse nine, I watched till thrones were put in place and the ancient of days was seated. His garment was white as snow and the hair of his head was like pure wool. This is the one in connection with whom Daniel says in a few verses later in verse 13, behold one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven and he came to the Ancient of Days and they brought him near before him. But now in Revelation chapter 1, The one like the son of man is the one with the garment white as snow and hair of his head like pure wool. As Revelation, as our passage says, his hair and his head are white like wool and snow. And then in Daniel chapter 10, verse five, he says, I lifted my eyes and looked and behold a certain man clothed in linen whose waist was girded with the gold of Uphaz. Okay, so again, the white robe and the golden band. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning. Okay, so the face like lightning, the same as the face shining like the sun in full glory, both of which are impossible to imagine, or to imagine correctly, but obviously the same thing. His eyes like torches of fire, same thing as Revelation chapter one. His arms and feet like burnished bronze, same thing as Revelation 1, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. Whereas in Revelation 1, it's the sound of many waters. You can imagine John on the island of Patmos and the waves of the sea crashing loudly. and those two attempts at the description of the sound of his words. And then Daniel has the same response there in chapter 10. There's no strength in him. He responds as one who is as if dead. And so here is the greatness of the glory of the Lord Jesus, the divine person who has added to himself humanity to be our king and our prophet. But here as our priest, the different aspects of the description communicates certain things about him. Of course, the whiteness and communicates about his purity. The flaming eye communicates his burning gaze, how he sees to the heart of every one of us. His personal glory and his face like lightning or the sun, the power of his word, and the voice being like the sound of many waters or the sound of a multitude. And yet in all of this glory, what he is doing now is sending his word to his church as prophet, and especially tending his church, making sure that the lamps are taken care of, that there's enough fuel, that the wicks are trimmed, doing everything that is necessary for the health and continuation of his church. We should value the visible church greatly, as the Lord Jesus values the visible church greatly. And although there is much in her that lacks and grieves, yet the Lord Jesus is the one that is tending to her. And so we should pray for her and we should serve her. We should have our confidence about the outcome of the visible church in this glorious one who attends to her. And he doesn't just attend to the church corporately, he attends to believers individually and personally. When John says in verse 17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. The response is, he laid his right hand on me, saying to me, do not be afraid. And then he reaffirms what had made John afraid. I am the first and the last. I am he who lives and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. So he says, do not be afraid. I am God. But then he also affirms that he's not just God, he's also man. He is not just in his divine nature, the one who is and was and is to come. He is in his human nature, the one who lives and was dead and behold, is alive forevermore. In other words, in Jesus, all of the glory of God, has been mustered to save us. So when he says, I have the keys of Hades and of death, he's referring to that prison that we deserved to be locked in forever by our sin. The wages of sin is death and not just physical death, but to continue under the power of death and therefore to continue forever with the expression of God's glory upon us in fury forever. And yet, Jesus says, I have the keys. By his life and death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus has obtained the keys to the prison. And for those who are his bondservants, his slaves, like John and every Christian, Jesus has sprung them free from the prison, so that the greatness of his glory isn't a reason for us to be awed to death, It's a reason for us to be awed, but to be awed in a way that makes us all the more alive, that encourages and strengthens us. It is just right that you should be greatly humbled before the Lord Jesus Christ. But because he is the one who comes and he puts his right hand on John, And he says, do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. It's like when God appears to Abraham in Genesis 17 and says, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. By God's almighty power, he might have expressed his almighty power in punishing Abraham, or Abram, until that interview, for what had happened with Hagar and Ishmael. But he comes and he pledges his almighty power as that by which Abram would walk before him and be blameless. And the Lord Jesus here comes And he gives to John the expression of his glory and his almighty power as that by which John would not be afraid. So while it is just right that you should be humbled to the dust before Christ, it is also just right that by his glory being your encouragement and strength, you would obey his command to put away your fear. So why do we need this revelation of Christ? Because each of us will stand before him. And who he is? He is the one true and living God of the same nature and equal in power and glory with the Father and with the Spirit. But what he has done, he has added to himself our nature. He has lived and died and risen again as a man, in order to be our king and our prophet, to whom we must listen, and our priest, who tends not only to his church, but ministers to each of his people. all of the benefits of what he has done for us. This is the Jesus about whom the book of Revelation tells us. This is the Jesus whom the book of Revelation reveals. Amen, let's pray. Lord, thank you for giving this revelation to John for the seven churches in Asia and for all of the congregations of your church these last 1,930 or 1,950 or so years. Grant that we would respond rightly to you as a result of reading and considering and hearing your word so that by the time we come to stand before you, we too will shine like the sun because you will have removed from us everything that is offensive. So do it, we ask, for the sake of your glory and by the expression of your glory. So we ask it in your name, amen.