If you have a Bible this morning and you wanna read along with us, we're gonna take a reading from the book of Revelation chapter one. And we're gonna try to read beginning in verse four. I'll confess to you this morning that I very often dread this day, at least the responsibility that I have for this day, Because there are some truths that are so much higher than what words can express that it almost feels vain to try. What Jesus did, if Brother Harvey, I'll blame him if his calculations are right, as he said on the hillside today, 1,995 years ago, if that really did happen, which I believe that it did, there is nothing that I nor any man could ever say to describe what took place on that day. So somehow I wish that We could all just be silent and that God through His Holy Spirit would just place these truths in our heart with such a power and vividness that our minds would just be awestruck as they fix upon Jesus Christ. I think that the difference between Those whose lives attempt to follow Christ and those who dilly-dally with Christ is often, I would say always, I think, dependent upon how clearly that we see the truth of Jesus Christ. When His death is not an event, and His person is not a character from long ago, but when it is breathed into life inside of you, something happens to you whenever that happens. When you see His resurrection not as anything related to something that humans could commemorate, but an event determined from eternity past to take place and the echoes of which will resound for all of eternity as loudly as what they did on the day that the stone was rolled away. It does something to you. I'm thankful today that Jesus is alive, not in an artificial way, not in a way that a metaphorical way, not as the climactic point of an old story, but I'm glad that he's alive and that I know him. This morning, as we think about our scripture reading today, I may just say a few things before we read it. I wanna try this morning to lay out before you, how do I wanna say this? I want to try and enlarge, if I can, your perception of the power of Jesus Christ. The New Testament is, emphasizes in his, especially in the Gospels, so much about his life. Very easy, it's so easy and common to have our minds almost interpret certain things about Jesus that are pointed out to give us a incomplete and perhaps even lead us astray into how we imagine the power of Jesus Christ. But I want you to know this morning that Jesus Christ has power. The Bible says that He has all power in heaven and in earth. We don't need to be afraid to proclaim even amidst a world that mocks and scoffs at His name and who says exactly what Peter said that they would say, that where is the promise of His coming? And they scoff and they mock. Let us not be afraid to proclaim that in this moment, Jesus Christ has power. Every atom in this universe is dependent upon the power of Jesus Christ. Every heartbeat and every breath that you take is dependent upon the power of Jesus Christ. Every sin that has ever and will ever be forgiven is dependent upon the power of Jesus Christ. The resurrection that is forthcoming where every person who has ever lived and ever will live that will one day die, their bodies are as assured to rise from the grave as any assurance that could ever be given because of the power of Jesus Christ. He has power. And yet the portrayal of him as commanded by the will of God in the New Testament is showing an altogether different kind of power. The Bible teaches us that Jesus was born to those poor folk. those poor young kids. When you think of young kids today, think of yourself at their presumed ages. We knew nothing about nothing. Jesus was born to these poor kids in the midst of a personal crisis for them. So many layered crisis. Mary's crisis. Being born of a virgin, she is one of one. Nobody has been like Mary. And we don't exalt her in the way that other denominations do and that we should worship her or look to her as if she has power because let me tell you, Mary does not have power. At all. She was looked down for her humility within the heart of God's soul, this poor, humble servant, and graced her with the greatest gift ever known to mankind, but it was not due as much to her virtue and righteousness as it was to the grace and mercy and love of God. Mary does not have power. And yet she had to proclaim a truth that happened to her that is completely, to use a pun, inconceivable, unimaginable, and to which no proof could be given of her own to prove that to mankind. What could she say to convince mankind that truly God had visited her in a divine display of his own power and impregnated her with a perfect holy child that would be like no other? They were in a rush to get to Bethlehem. Imagine Joseph's crisis, imagine the shame. Look at how lowly and humble, almost embarrassing the story of Jesus' birth is. They were raised, excuse me, they raised him. And there's something about the fact that the scriptures remain silent about his 30 years that is incredible to me. We get one snapshot, that's it. Otherwise, from the miraculous birth until the dawning of his ministry, it's incredible to me that he was just quiet. I've said it before here, I think part of what is incredible to me is the natural impulse that you would have, not only knowing all truth, but being truth, how compelled you would feel in such a world of darkness, In such a world where falsity and lies and heresy prevailed, where all of what his father had designed to be within Judaism had been infected with and contaminated by all of this sin, and there was just so much wrong It would have been harder to find truth being done and spoken than it would have been for right to be shown amidst all of that. And yet in the middle of all of that, Jesus is obedient to his father, just doing exactly what his father said, which was to be silent and obscurely living in a small place unbeknownst to anybody. That truth is only confirmed in the fact that his own brothers, I mean, think of the level of silence that Jesus kept, that his own brothers were not convinced to believe yet. And yet that was Jesus. I don't understand. I just don't understand. I'm not gonna try to qualify that. I just don't understand how he could be perfect in accordance with the law. I mean, real quick, I realized my kids weren't perfect right after they were born. Real quick, after meeting you and you meeting me, it became clear. You're not perfect and neither am I. And yet there Jesus was, day in and day out, perfect. And yet he remained silent. The Bible reveals, and we'll hopefully get to our text here in a few moments, this was the King of kings. This was God in the flesh. This was the creator of all. And no one worshiped. No one paid homage and bowed down to God walking among them. And he just didn't tell them, not yet. What humility. And then God, through the Spirit, the Father gives him the Spirit without measure. There's 100 sermons right there you could talk about. And he used all of this, what we would call supernatural power, and none of it for his own sake. He didn't make feasts so that his appetite might be satisfied. Rather, he went out into the wilderness for 40 days, surrendering to the will of the Father to be tempted by Satan, fasting all of that time. Why? Because it was the will of God to do that. And when he multiplied the bread and the fishes, both of those occasions, it wasn't for the desire to personally satiate himself. It was for the welfare of others, both naturally and spiritually for their welfare. When he had throngs of people congregating around him, the words that he spoke were not falling, he was not falling prey to the temptation to get caught up in eloquence and the power of oratory that people might speak well of him. He was trying to demonstrate to all the world for their sake that the message he was speaking was true and that because it was true, they might believe and find eternal life in him. His ministry, even all of the attention he gained, was not about himself. As Brother Harvey mentioned on the hillside this morning, had it been the case, when they began to desire to crown him a king, certainly if it would have been about him and what he could have achieved and esteem, aspired to, that he would have surrendered to that and said, yes, I am a king, crown me king of the earth, and let all come and see it. But Jesus didn't do that. That's because the power he displayed in his life was a different kind of power. It was a power of righteousness. It was a power of selflessness. It was a power of surrender. to the will of another. It was the power of having power and not using it against people, but for people. I think every time that he said the word kingdom, people thought of power like the book of Revelation describes his power today. They thought of royalty. They thought of robes and scepters and crowns. I think even up to the end, the disciples were convinced that Jesus was gonna come and perform all the miracles for the masses of the downtrodden in order to gain a following, and then he was gonna pivot and use his power in an earthly, in a violent way to overcome the Roman Empire and thus crown himself king. even the minds of the disciples could not spiritually perceive the power that Christ was exercising in his earthly ministry. But oh, what a power that it was. Today, if I told you, if I gave you the instruction, or if God gave you the instruction, because he already has, to live in perfect surrender to his will, And I said, use all the power and strength that you have to obey the will of God. You don't have the power to do it. It's not just you don't have the willingness to do it. That's true as well. Our depraved hearts, our sinful bodies are constrained by these selfish, sensual appetites that we desire to be satiated of our hearts, of all the pleasures. We want to do our will. But let's say for a moment that you were determined for one day to completely surrender everything about your will to the Father, to doing His will. Listen, you don't have the power to do that. You don't have the strength. You can't fully surrender and carry out His will of your own strength. Jesus does have that power. and he showed that to us during his life. And the book of Philippians shows us the extent to which he was able and willing to exercise that power when it says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in likeness of flesh, and being found in fashion, or excuse me, let me turn there real quick because it talks about how he was even willing to go to death. Even the dender was not just for an hour when the conditions are perfect, I'll strive to obey my father. But listen, under the most horrific conditions ever known to man, Jesus Christ both had and successfully seized the power and executed to surrender his will all the way to the death of the cross. And if that was the only power that he ever shown, I would gladly spend all eternity worshiping God for the power of character and righteousness which he has. This is my opinion, I can't prove it, and I don't even know if I believe this. How's that sound? I think the power of character is a greater power than the power of physical strength. People marvel about the omniscience of God, about what we would call the properties of God's attributes, those impersonal properties that are not related to His character, about His attributes, that He can see in all places, that if we descend into the abyss, God is there. And if we climb the highest mountain, God is there. You can go to the farthest galaxies of space, and God is there. And although that is magnificent, In the same way, His omnipotence or His divine power, that we can see the natural world that He spoke into existence in Genesis 1 and be struck with awe at our Creator or the stars that were flung throughout the sky. We can pause for a moment on a clear night and marvel and worship and yet the greatest qualities of Jesus Christ are not confined to those properties of His power, but are found in the person and character of Jesus Christ. It is the brightness of His glory is Jesus. The brightness of His glory. How does God have a brightness, right? Think about that. How does God have a brightness? But He does. and it's Jesus. As the world, let me say this, as shallow Christians worship those properties which are right to do so, who he is, the character that he has, is why I love to worship Jesus Christ. In the book of Revelation, chapter one, I wanna show you a different side of Jesus than those things. That was in his first advent, those and so much that I left out, I show, but I wanna show this morning the power of the resurrected Jesus. All the beatings, it's over. All the weakness, all the formidable strength being found in the display of his character, oh, they're still there, and they're gonna be on display. But that's not where his power is solely going to be seen. Jesus now has and will demonstrate a power over this cosmos and over eternity. that will be something to behold. I don't know where I wanna start this morning. Let's look at verse four. I'm gonna have to move quickly today. It says this, John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come. And from the seven spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince, the word means rulers, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Last couple of months, we've had a president who has kind of shaken the world of politics a little bit, right? He's kind of come in and whether you like it or whether you don't, he's caused a ruckus in the world. But listen, there is no king or president both now or ever that is the king of kings. Jesus, I think in heaven, The kings, I think at the judgment, the kings and mighty rulers of the earth will stand before our great God and bow, pay homage and honor and surrender every word of power that they have ever spoken, every symbol of authority that they've ever worn upon themselves, they will lay prostrate at his feet and they will honor him with all of their hearts, with all of their minds and acknowledge who he is. Jesus is ruler over all. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood. You know, I think so often we hear truths spoken so frequently that it rubs us and we stop and we pause. Jesus can forgive us of sin. Think of the power of that. Even when Jesus in his earthly life, when he spoke words of forgiveness to people, people cried out and they said, hey now, stop that. You're just a man. You don't have the power. Only God has the power to forgive sin. And it was as though Jesus is saying, you're exactly right. Only God has the power to forgive sin. And what takes more power? Telling this man who is lame to get up and walk or forgiving his sin. And so I will prove to you how much power I have, and ultimately, who I really am, get up and walk, and right before their eyes, they would stand up and they would walk, and as the people would marvel, what they ought to have done is bowed before Him who has power to forgive sin. I heard this week, listening to the radio, I heard that the Pope came out into Basilica And all these people were so excited. No doubt many of them will remember that day until the day they die. Because they're under the illusion that that man has the power to forgive sin. And listen, he has no such power. I think we don't understand that because we don't understand what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It's not, I have hard feelings towards you, and now those hard feelings are good feelings. There is a legal implication to being guilty of sin. And that is a death must come upon all of those who have sinned. The soul who sins will surely die. That comes from the mouth of the Almighty Himself because it comes from the nature of the Almighty Himself. God cannot dwell in the presence of sin. And because God is just, He does not just willy-nilly forgive people of sin because that would stain the righteousness of the judge. If you had committed a heinous act and murdered all of my family, And we came before the judge, and the judge looked at you and said, you know what, I feel sympathy for you, and I believe that you really are sorry. I will forgive you. Your relief would only be outweighed by my indignation because of the injustice of the judge. Justice demands a verdict for the soul that is sinned. But Jesus, because He paid the price for sin, He has all power to remit sin. He can forgive because He has paid the punishment for our sins. and he washes us in his own blood. Notice the possessiveness of that. Notice it is not that he gives that job to another. He himself washes us in his own blood and thereby grants us forgiveness of sin. Why do I think I'll recognize Jesus in heaven? Because it will not be the first time that I've encountered him. I'll know exactly who he is. Because the same thing, the same emotion that washed over me when I was washed by his blood, no doubt will be the same emotion that washes over me in heaven when I stand in his very presence. Listen, he's gonna have a body. He's gonna be a man. Both then, now, and for all of eternity, he will be a man. And I'll see Him with these eyes. And I believe I'll feel Him with this heart in the same way that I have felt Him hundreds of times in my life now. He has forgiven us of sin. He has power to do that. Look at verse 7. Behold, He cometh with clouds, And every eye shall see him. I love this visual. You know, if you and I jumped out of a plane and hit a cloud, we'd go right through it. Like we think, we can think through the imagery there that somehow power, there's power in a cloud to hold somebody. It doesn't have any power. But what it's describing here is the same power that Jesus displayed in his life when there he was on the Sea of Galilee, walking across the water there near the apostles. It's the same power he displayed whenever they were hurt. on the ship and he was sleeping and there was a great storm. And he looked at the storm and he said, peace be still. And all of nature was silenced at the command of their creator. It's the same power that as he was entering in there to Jerusalem and those people were thronging him and calling out Hosanna and honoring him as the Messiah that was to come. And those people were saying, silence them. They don't have the right to say that. And he said this, if they're silent, the rocks and the hills will cry out, glory to my name. That's the same power that it says he will exhibit one day. All the natural order of creation will cease to function on the processes that it has always functioned upon because its creator is here. and all clouds and all of earth. I don't understand how that every eye can see him if we live on a globe, but that's what's gonna happen. Because every eye, the Bible says, will see him. I've often wondered what that's gonna be like. Is he just gonna unroll this earth out and cut through the sky? And then everything. I wonder if the birds this morning when I woke up real early, the birds were chirping and it was just so beautiful. I sat there in our little piano room and I heard the birds chirping and it was the first time, this is gonna sound maybe funny, but I thought about what it must have been like for the birds on the day of his resurrection. Every morning about 5 a.m. they chirp now. What about that morning? that all the birds know that their creator was now alive, and flock to not understand with the same intellect that you and I have what had occurred, but to know even in their nature that something had occurred. You ever hear that whenever like an earthquake's coming that animals can get that sense, they can feel the tremors? There was a tremor that day that was not physical, but spiritual. This is describing all the earth was saved. And then it says, even those who pierced him will see. That's a quote from an Old Testament scripture. That's referencing the resurrection of the dead. that even those who killed him and pierced his hand, those Roman soldiers who drove those stakes through his hand, all people will see Jesus clothed in immense power. I gotta keep going, I wanna read a couple things. Didn't intend to say anything that I've said this morning. I wanna get to what I wanted to say very quickly. Look at verse 11. Jesus says this, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Now, notice this is a declaration. So sometimes, I don't wanna say this, Sometimes we find in the scriptures that certain sermons are, let us come and reason together. And so by nature, they're an argument. They're saying, here's the proof of my declaration that I'm trying to make, the statement of truth. And it's necessary very often for us to provide mountains and mountains of evidence to back up a claim. And the more extraordinary the claim, the more clear the evidence must be to having been true. But listen, when Jesus speaks in His present state of power, The veracity of the thing that he is saying is self-evident. In other words, when He comes back and all eyes see Him, there will be a power present that there will need to be no qualifiers and no evidence provided. There will not to be any references to Old Testament prophecies that have been made. Every eye will know when Jesus said, I am the Alpha, I am the Omega, I am the beginning of all of this. I am the end of all of this. By this, all things consist in heaven and in earth. I believe all of us will know it. And so today, as the world drowns in disbelief, and as they drive deeper and deeper in unbelief, trying to convince themselves and delude their thoughts, as our own hearts can at times be, have a veil over it from seeing with clarity the truth that God wants to show us. Listen, on that day, Jesus will speak with self-evident commands, cloaked and filled with his power. I am the beginning of what? Everything. I'm the beginning of the law. I'm the end of the law. I'm the beginning of righteousness. I'm the end of righteousness. I'm the beginning of love. I'm the end of love. I'm the beginning of all of creation. I am certainly going to put an end to all of creation. In me is found life. The scripture goes on here to tell us this. So many things I wish I could say. Look at verse 17 and 18 and then I'll be done. And when I saw him, this is John speaking, now this is interesting because Jesus in this particular occasion puts his hand on his shoulder. Imagine what that must have felt like. I bet Jesus did that a lot during John's life, don't you think? When they were going around for three years in the ministry, I bet very often Jesus actually physically touched John. But this touch was different. This time Jesus touched him and John just fell to the earth. And Jesus speaks, fear not, I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore." What words of power that that is to speak. Like, I want to ask for anybody, who gives you the right to say something like that? I am Him that liveth. I love that because listen, all of us, we are dependent upon God and certain processes that He has put into place for life. So none of us can really proclaim with confidence, I live as if we are the source and strength of our own life. All it takes is for some young man at the height of his strength to have some, what we would consider millimeters worth of defect in his heart or in his body, for everything to stop and for him to fall dead and all of us surrounding him with the greatest of strength to the least of strength are reminded, it is my life is not held in my own hands. I am altogether dependent upon God alone. And Jesus doesn't say that. He says, I am He that lives. And then He proposes both a declaration of power and irony, but I was dead. And then as though he wants to surpass the declaration of already being able to say, I live of my own strength, he says this, not only do I live, I am alive forevermore. There is nothing anyone can do to subvert the life that I have and I give. And then he takes it a step further. like a bold warrior who has conquered all foes and who fears absolutely nothing. He says, and I have the power of hell and of death in my hand to extend to whom I will. He not only lives in accordance with his own power, but he gives life to others in accordance to his own power. That's the power of the resurrected Jesus Christ. Listen friends today, when the Bible says that we have nothing to fear, we have nothing to fear. Satan and all of his foes, death and all of its pains can do nothing against the power of Jesus Christ. And so what are we taught to do live in consequence of his power. We in the United States, we live so freely. Do you know why we forget this? Because we're safe. We've been safe for all of our lives. No foreign army has ever encroached upon our county or our state. much less your own property. And so you feel this innate safety that you can come and go and explore all the contours of freedom that your heart so desires to bring you pleasure. And it's because we have this confidence in our military strength and might. Well, listen, as Christians, We're free in a way that the U.S. military could never provide freedom. And God wants us to live free. free of the judgment of others, free of the pains of hell, free of the grip of death or of sickness, free of all of that because Jesus, the resurrected Christ, stands with power and has given us life. This morning, I'm thankful for how he came. I'm thankful that he died. I'm thankful that he rose again with power. And this morning, I'm thankful that 40 days after he rose again, he ascended to the Father. Think of that kind of power. That he just, I mean, imagine being there that day. Imagine as they went up to that mountain, and he had taught and instructed them for 40 days, and then all of the sudden, all of the laws of gravity for Jesus are just suspended I like to think, this is my imagination, so take it as such, that Jesus begins to rise and he's looking up. And then just one by one, he looks at every single apostle and just displays in so doing all of his power. And he goes out of sight. And they're just left standing there in awe. I like to think that they stood there for quite some time. They knew he was coming back. And they just stood there. They had seen Jesus do a lot of things. They had never seen Jesus do that before. And they just stood marveling at his power until these angels come and say, this same Jesus who left shall so come in like manner. And now he sits, he takes, listen, his rightful place upon the right hand of God. That's saying something. His rightful place. He sits upon the throne of David, both now and forever. And He rules this world. And one day, His rule will become abundantly clear to all. And as the book of Revelations proclaims with no uncertainty, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Come and show us what is already true, just not evident to us physically in the moment. I'm thankful for the risen power of Jesus Christ.