Go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of Revelation. Revelation. And I will just say at the outset, we made it. Last year on Rally Day, so the last Sunday in August last year, we started our Bible overview. And I'm fully aware some lessons have been better than others. But I do hope that on the whole that this series has been a blessing to you and helped you to see how the whole of the Bible fits together. and how it's telling one unfolding story. Each smaller book fits into its own section, and that section has helped building up one overarching story of the scripture, which is the meta-narrative of all scripture, God's creation, man's fall. So two of the four big events of scripture are within the first three chapters. And then there's the promise of redemption that is wrought in Christ Jesus on the cross, that he would die on the cross for the sins of his people, taking God's curse, upon himself, that he might give us his righteousness, and then today we hit the fourth and final point of the overall meta-narrative of the Bible, and that's the consummation of all things. That's what the book of Revelation is about. So we're ending the series today on a very high note. There is a fair bit of agreement within the evangelical Christian Bible-believing world about the first three chapters of the book, and the last two. And the middle is a free for all of different views. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And then ultimately, uh, what the message is about now, how you handle that massive middle section of chapters four to 20, it's going to depend on what approach you take to the book. And there are solid, uh, men that we respect and honor and esteem that hold two different approaches than what I do and what Dr. Phillips does. and what is the predominant view of the Reformed Church today. But we'll get to that when we get there. The first major approach to the Book of Revelation is called the Futurist view. The Futurist view. Now they wouldn't come to you and say, I'm a Futurist. This is technical language, but it's what we call the view. And it's the predominant one in the American Church today. It's the view that's held by men like John MacArthur, who we greatly appreciate and have profited from a great deal. And it's also the view of James Montgomery Boyce, who most of you probably don't know, but he was a significant pastor in the PCA in the 80s and the 90s. He was actually Dr. Phillips' mentor. He was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In a nutshell, in broad strokes, the futurist view of Revelation is that everything in the book is future. Very complicated technical term here, but everything is yet to take place. And also that goes with that, a particular stripe of futuristic approach that is predominant is called premillennial dispensationalism. And the overall view of that camp is that the world is going to continue to get worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, and right before it hits the absolute breaking point, Jesus comes back and saves the day. As I said, this is the most widespread of the views. It's probably, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic or exaggerating here, probably 98% of professing Christians in the West would give you some version of this. It's a very dominant view. and I'm gonna tell you in a little bit why it's wrong, but it's very, very prevalent. The next view is in many ways the exact opposite. It's called the Preterist view. That's P-R-E-T-E-R-I-S-T. And this view is the opposite both in terms of its meaning and also its overall impact. It's kind of a big deal in the Reformed world, but we're such a small sliver of the church in the first place that being a reasonably decent deal in our world isn't big in the overall scheme of things. One notable theologian that you probably have heard of that would espouse something like this is R.C. Sproul, took this view. So again, highly revered, highly esteemed. And the overall view is if the future says everything has already happened, the preterist, or excuse me, the future says everything is yet to happen, the preterist says everything has already happened. Within preterism, there's two different camps. There's full preterists, that's heresy, who would say literally every single letter of this book has already been fulfilled. And in effect, they're denying a very important part of the book, which is the second coming of the Lord Jesus. That is rank heresy and is to be fully rejected. Sproul did not hold that. He held to a view called partial preterism, which is, I think, incorrect, but is nonetheless Orthodox overall. You can be a Christian and hold that wrong view. And that view is that most of the book is fulfilled. Most of the judgments that John writes of occurred in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. It's growing more common. And also, another way that this is the opposite of the future view is there's a tendency amongst partial preterists to believe that instead of the world getting progressively worse until Jesus comes back at the end, The exact opposite is true. The world is going to continue to get better. And they wouldn't put it like this, but I really don't like this view. The world continues to get better, and then Jesus comes back as almost the cherry on top, to put it pejoratively. That's the preterist view. And again, we'll get to the right one in a moment here. Last of the wrong views. is called the Historicist View. Almost nobody holds this today because it's kind of run its course and you'll see why that is as I explain it. But it was very big amongst the Protestant Reformers. Men like Luther and Calvin would have held some version of this. And the idea is that Revelation starts a clock at the end of the first century. And it's charting all the way up to Christ's return. And so the historicist view is trying to basically find out, all right, at what point on the timeline are we? Does that make sense? They see Revelation as a linear line from beginning to end. And so it's being progressively fulfilled. in time, and we're looking for what dot on the line is ours, and just everybody says we're in chapter 19, okay? Like there's no very... and that's why the view has died out, because people have been saying that for a thousand years, and we're still going, right? So the view is almost totally dead in the water. The final view, and what I would say is the correct view, is that called the idealist view of the Book of Revelation. And it's describing, similarly to the historicist view, the whole of world history in the times between Christ's first and second coming. And this is the view that I hold, this is the view Dr. Phillips holds, it's the view that's the majority in the Reformed world today. But the gist is that there's a set, Revelation is a set of seven different visions. And seven is a significant and symbolic number in the Bible. Does anyone know what the number seven represents in biblical literature? Josiah? Completion. Perfection. This is the fulfillment of the time. This is the whole of the time between these ages. And so each vision is running the same span of time, but from a different angle. It's almost like as you get to a new vision, and I'll give you the outline in just a minute, it's as if you're watching an instant replay on a sports game, and first you're focused in on, all right, well, what did the quarterback do in this play? And then you run the play back and you watch the exact same play, but this time you're gonna say, all right, well, what did the tight end do? And then you're gonna run the play back and watch the exact same play and focus in on some other player, some other position. And so each vision is covering that time between Christ's first and second coming, But there's progress within them as each vision gets more and more clear what's going on. So it's not necessarily a circle that's never ending, so much as it's a spiral that's getting more and more and more narrowed down to the clear, precise point. Does that make sense so far? Anything I'm saying like, okay, we'll keep going. So here's the outline of the book, and you'll see right away why that number seven is so significant as I give you the main sections of the book. So section one, chapters one to three, and this section covers the seven letters to the seven churches. Section two is chapters four to eight, or chapter eight, verse one, rather, and this is the seven seals. The third vision is chapter eight, two, to chapter 11, and this is the seven trumpets. Does anyone see a pattern here? Perhaps why we think the number seven is significant to the overall structure of the book. Chapter four, or vision four, rather, is chapters 12 to 14, this is the battle of Satan. Now, what's interesting is you'd expect the battle of Satan to be at the end of the book, if the book was designed to go linear all the way throughout, and yet it's right here, smack dab in the middle, because it's covering this cycle of time over and over and over again. Section five, the fifth vision, chapters 15 to 16, There are the bulls, and anyone wanna take a guess at how many bulls there are? Seven, that's right. All right, vision six. This is chapters 15 and 16, sorry. Chapters 17 to 19, the bull of Babylon. Which is another telling of the battle of Satan. You see the picture here, and then finally, The seventh vision, chapters 20 to 22, is the new heavens and the new earth. Okay, that's the outline of the book. There's seven sections, all covering the fullness of the time between the first and second coming of the Lord Jesus. And as I said, each section is, while it's covering the same span of time, it's highlighting particular aspects of that time. So the seven letters to the seven churches is telling you this is how the churches are doing from the ascension of Christ to His return. This is what's going on in the church. The seven seals is the unfolding of God's purpose in the world generally. The seven trumpets is the glory of God that's being proclaimed this whole time, right? Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. And so the church is sounding the glory of the gospel trumpet the entire time. Chapters 12 to 14 in the battle against Satan, chapter 12 is amazing. I would highly encourage you to go back and read, if you read just one part of Revelation, If you read just one part, read 20 to 22, but if you read one additional part, read chapter 12 later. And what you'll see is the theme of God's protection and his provision for his people, though Satan crouches about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour the people of God, Peter would say. God protects them. He watches over them. He preserves them. And then the seven bowls is the pouring out of God's wrath. It is ultimately fully realized at the return of Christ, but he is, his wrath does abide on the wicked even now. Chapters 17 to 19, the downfall of Babylon is a hyper-focused picture on the ultimate destruction of all God's enemies. And chapters 20 to 22, the new heavens and the new earth is God's, the fullness of his redemption realized. That redemption that he promised all the way back at the beginning of the book. Not of Revelation, of the Bible, all the way back in Genesis. It's fully realized in the seventh vision. So it's very climactic in that way. Now, some of our friends, especially the futurists who want to take this as all literal unfolding history would say, why in the world do you get to allegorize and spiritualize all of this stuff? Perhaps, I'm just, throwing this out there. Because chapter one, verses 12 to 20, Jesus says, these are the symbols and these are what they mean. He gives you the key to unpacking the symbolism of the book in the book. So that's why we take it that way. I don't mean to be too snarky towards our friends, but it's clearly a book of pictures, as is laid out in chapter one. So now, with that out of the way, there's one other thing to address as we approach the book of Revelation, and that's the question of genre. That's one reason why there's so many different approaches to the book, is because there's so many different ways to look at the genre. The genre of the book is complicated. As we've done this overview of the Bible, we've talked about lots of different types of literature that's in the Bible. Can anybody name just one? One type of literature that's in the Bible? Wisdom literature all right, what's that poetry? Exactly right all right, so I hand over here Prophecy all right, there's for there's prophets Beginning a series of the Prophet Joel in the worship service, so there's prophecies. What else is there Ethan? historical literature one of my seminary professors conjectured Probably, and he's probably right about this, maybe up to 70% of the Bible is historic narrative. It's huge. Consider everything from Genesis up to Esther, which is like half of the Old Testament is all historic narrative. And then all the Gospels are historic narrative, like it's a massive amount. And there's also letters. We call them the epistles. There's John's letters, there's Paul's letters, there's Peter's letters. And you read a letter differently than you read historic narrative. A letter is more personal. Historic narrative is, these are the facts. You read that differently than you read wisdom literature, which is more poetic in nature. And you read that differently than you read prophecy. So there's a big debate about the genre of the book of Revelation. The genre that you understand something to be in has a major impact on how you interpret that thing. You can do this with music. People do it all the time. They'll take one very popular song, Maybe it's a ballad, right? And there's like this emotional, whimsical music that's behind it, and it communicates a romantic feeling. And you take that exact same song, and you put like, I don't know, goofy, upbeat comedy music behind it, and it changes the way that you hear the song. You can do this with lots of different things. Perhaps when you read your textbooks for school, which I know nobody wants to be thinking about right now, but I hope that you read that in a different way, with a different set of lenses than you read ads. There were these things that we used to have when I was young called magazines that were just fun articles. I hope you read that differently than you read your textbook. It's still words on a page, but the genre is different. The genre affects how you read it. Now there are, what makes Revelation complicated is there are three genres all at play at the same time. Okay? And I'm going to show them all to you real quick. Chapter one, verse one, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. The Greek word that's translated revelation there is apocalypsis, from which we get our word apocalypse. The first word of the book is telling you this is apocalyptic literature. That is, it's to be taken as symbolic and symbols. Yes, about real events, but it's describing them in a symbolic way. The second genre is found in verse three. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this what? Prophecy so it's apocalyptic and it's prophetic Now there's a third genre that's at play here And I'll just have can I get somebody to please read verses 4 to 8 Revelation 1 verses 4 to 8 Yes, Miss Merrill Grace to you and peace from him who is from I'm going to pause you there. Can I get you, Ms. Marillet, to also flip over to Revelation 22, 18-21? I know this is more than you signed up for. Chapter 22, 18-21. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone asks to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away a share of the tree of life and of the holy city, which are described in this book. He who testifies to these things say, surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord All right, so if we look at those two sections, at the beginning and the end of the book, does that sound like any other books of the Bible that we've looked at recently? John, two of the seven churches that are in Asia, and then he ends, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. It's like the epistles! So we've got apocalyptic prophetic letter. We've got all three of those genres in play. Now, what does all that mean? What's the cash value of that? Why did I go through all that? Because if that's the case, it's talking about future events. That's the nature of prophecy. It's revealing God's works in time. That means it has relevance to the people that it was originally written to. Excuse me, it has relevance to, and to us today. And it's a letter, which means it must have some semblance of relevancy to the people in the first century to whom it was written. And when you say, all right, it's got future implications, it's got ongoing implications, and it's got past implications for the time it was written, that means it's got to account for this whole period of time between the first and second coming. I've spent this whole time to labor, that's the correct way to read the book. Now, with the time that we have left, we obviously can't cover all of these. I've given you kind of the main idea of each of these sections, and if you want that again later for notes, Come see me after. Let's look at the message of the book properly with the little bit of time we have left. And the message of the book, Opal has already read for us. It's in verses four and five. The message of the book, this is in its most pure form, a letter from the one who is and who was and who is to come. That is the thrice holy God. It's a letter from the triune God to the seven churches. That is the fullness, the completeness, the wholeness of his people, all of his people. And the message is grace and to you and peace, grace and peace. And so the reason that I spent so much time going with how to approach this book is so that you can read it. and see that it is a message of grace and peace. It's a message of God's grace and peace as his purposes are unfolding for all of time. It's this message of his grace and peace as his gospel is proclaimed for the whole of the church age. It's a message of grace and peace. as we are assured that He protects us and watches over us in the battle of Satan. It's a message of grace and peace, warning others to flee from the wrath to come in the seven bowls, and on and on you go. It's a message of grace and peace. And that's why I am so vexed by the fact that so many Christians never read it, don't want to touch it. It's so life-giving, it's so important, and we need to understand it's a message of grace and peace. So let's define those words. One very popular definition of grace that is not wrong, but it's also not all the way right, is grace is unmerited favor. Has anyone ever heard that before? Grace is unmerited favor. What does that mean? Josiah? It means favor that you don't deserve, like a gift. Yeah, favor that you don't deserve, a gift that you didn't earn. That's true, grace is that, but it is more than that. Grace is not merely unmerited favor getting what you did not deserve. Grace is demerited favor that's getting the opposite of what you deserve. We earned, we deserve God's wrath. And He rather gives us the opposite. He gives us His grace and His love. That is, God's kindness is poured out on those who have earned His contempt and wrath. But we can and ought to be even more specific than that. Because God has a general kindness that He shares with all of creation who have not earned it and have earned His wrath, right? The Bible says He sends His rain on the just as well as the unjust. Everyone gets demerited favor from God. But John is not speaking of that kind of what we'll call common grace here. He's writing to the seven churches about the special grace that belongs to them according to the election of God the Father, purchased on their behalf by Christ in his death and resurrection. Grace, as applied to the church, is The assurance that our sins have been paid for. That it is finished. I heard it one place and I can't remember where, but grace in the Christian context stands for God's riches, G-R, at Christ's expense. G-R-A-C-E. God's riches at Christ's expense. God lavishing his love upon you because Christ paid the debt for your sin that kept you apart from him. Grace is the assurance, as we've said, that it is finished. And the Apostle Paul would say, by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is within me. That is to say, the grace that God affords His people, yes, it procures and secures heaven for them one day, the new heavens and the new earth. It absolutely does that. But it also preserves us through all the rest of this. It preserves us and watches over us in the times of trial and temptation. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the power by which we live. It is God's grace in our lives. Similarly, that word peace means a lot more than we might initially think. I spent a lot of time on this in the Philippians series on Sunday evenings recently. A lot of people tend to think of peace as a merely a byproduct of grace. Does anybody know what byproduct means? That's a word that maybe we don't use all the time. Jack. Something that just comes with it. Yeah. Really part of it. Right. So I've got God's grace and therefore I have peace in my heart. There's a sense in which that's true. But the peace of God that passes all understanding is more than just the byproduct of having received grace. This word peace is the same standard translation that we get from the Hebrew word shalom. And this is a rich Old Testament word that means the ceasing of God's hostility. and the bringing to completeness, to soundness, to wholeness, to welfare. In other words, the word that John is using here is his way of reminding the seven churches that through the grace purchased by Christ, they have that. And this isn't just some happy coincidence result. Rather, it was a means to the end that they would be restored to what they were always made to be. they were supposed to be, at one with God in Christ Jesus. And this grace and peace, as the book of Revelation unfolds, is only found, it's exclusively found, in Christ alone. And they are the means by which he will preserve us until he comes again. Yea, Lord Jesus, come quickly. That's how the book ends. Let's pray. God in heaven, we give thanks to you for the book of Revelation. And I know that we were only able to touch on just such a light bit of it today, but father, I pray for my young friends. They would not be like so many other Christians that are afraid to even glance at the book, but that they would take it up and read it. They might experience a new, the blessing of those who read the prophecies contained in this book. They might grow in their knowledge of the grace and peace, which is theirs in Christ Jesus. In whose name I pray. Amen.