Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to Gospel in Life. What would it be like to hear Jesus speak directly to the church today? In the book of Revelation, we are given a rare glimpse of exactly that. Jesus addressing his followers with words of comfort, hope, and call. Today, Tim Keller explores how these letters to ancient churches invite us to examine our own hearts and receive the healing and renewal Christ offers.

Guest (Male): Good morning. Our scripture reading this morning is taken from the Revelation of John, chapter 1, verses 7 through 20.

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen. "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: "Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea."

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest.

His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches." This is God's word.

Tim Keller: There's lots of epistles and letters in the Bible written to churches from Paul, Peter, John, and other authors. There's only one place where there's a series of letters written directly from Jesus to the churches, to us, and that's here in the book of Revelation. Over the next seven weeks, we're going to be looking each week at one of those letters. There's seven letters, seven churches, and seven weeks.

But today, we are going to consider the initial appearance of Jesus Christ to the now aged and elderly apostle John on the isle of Patmos, where he is in exile. Jesus appears to him, and this is quite an amazing vision. I'd like us to take a look at three vivid contrasts. Each one tells us some important biblical truth that will really make a difference in our lives.

One of the contrasts is about Jesus, one is about John, and one is about us. What I'll call them is: Come but coming, Stunned but alive, and Suffering but brilliant. Jesus has come and yet he's coming again. John is stunned, smitten to the ground, and yet so alive. We, the lampstands, are suffering and yet brilliant.

Let's take a look at each of these three. The first one is verse 7, and that is about the second coming of Jesus Christ. He's come once; he was born in a manger, he lived and died, he rose again. But we're told here he's coming again. This is the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world.

The liberal mainline churches over the years have felt you can't take this teaching literally. It's only symbolic. Jesus Christ comes again whenever Christians live good lives of love in the world. But when you see here in verse 7 and all kinds of other places in the Bible, it says the second coming is going to happen at one event in the future. It says every eye will see him. This is not just something that comes in everybody's hearts in a symbolic way. Every eye will see him.

The conservative churches have said yes, we take this as a real historic actual future event. But the conservative churches have tended to obsess on when will it be, what year will it be, what will the signs be so that we can predict his coming.

Not only did Jesus repeatedly say no one knows the day or the hour, nobody knows when that's going to be—in fact, Jesus when he was on earth said even he didn't at the time know when it would be—but to even try to guess shows that you don't understand how this doctrine is supposed to really shape our lives.

So what is this doctrine? Well, take a look here. Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So may it be. Amen.

Now all Bible scholars over the years have said that the book of Revelation, more than any other New Testament book, draws on Old Testament imagery. It's constantly recycling and restating prophecies from the Old Testament, especially Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and so on. There are two prophecies behind this prophecy. Daniel chapter 7 says that the Son of Man will appear in the heavens in the clouds and will smite the evildoers in the nations.

Zechariah chapter 12, another Old Testament prophecy, says that when the Messiah comes, they who pierced him will mourn. But the word for mourn there in the Hebrew in Zechariah means to repent. Therefore, a lot of Bible scholars over the years have tried to struggle with this because here's the question: is Jesus Christ coming back to judge the nations or to convert the nations? Is he coming back to smite them or to turn them?

And Grant Osborne, who's written a commentary on the book of Revelation, perfectly summarizes what the book of Revelation is telling us about this in these two sentences. He says the nations of the earth in Revelation are the object of both mission and judgment. They are both to be offered the gospel of Jesus Christ in love and yet warned that evil and injustice and sin will eventually be accounted for.

Therefore, it is our task to participate in the former, the mission, and let God take care of the latter, the judgment. Let me tell you how important this is. I don't believe not only that you can live a day-to-day Christian life the way you should without understanding the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world, but I'm not even sure you can be emotionally healthy without it.

Here's the default mode of the human heart. We all are generally fairly blind to our own faults and we are incredibly aware of everybody else's. That's how we are. So for example, if somebody else lies, they're a liar. And if we lie, well, that's complicated.

We're always in denial. In other words, we're not very aware of our own flaws and we're incredibly aware of everybody else's flaws. That's how we all are. This is even true, by the way, of people who beat themselves up and they say I suffer from low self-esteem and they hate themselves. They still—if you've never known any of them or if you are one of them—you're just as blind to your faults as everybody else. You're blind to your own faults and you're very aware of other people's faults.

But the doctrine of the judgment day reverses that. It completely reverses it. Why? Because if it's true, and it is, that Jesus Christ could come back to judge the world at any moment and no one knows the day or hour—it could be right now—you must always, on the one hand, be in a situation that will bear up under that irresistible light.

You must always be doing the things today, right now. You must even be having thoughts in your heart that say I don't want to do anything that if suddenly Jesus Christ would show up to judge the world, I wouldn't be embarrassed.

So you see the judgment day, on the one hand, makes you very aware of yourself, humbles you, makes you think about your own faults. But on the other hand, it says that it's God who will judge the rest of the world. It's God who will do all that. It completely reverses our ordinary character. First of all, it makes us more aware of our own insides and it makes us willing to say about everybody else's, look, I don't know what they deserve, it's up to God.

It makes us humbler and more gracious instead of critical and in denial. For example, the idea of judgment day definitely makes us become more aware of our own insides. C.S. Lewis has a great essay on this called "The World's Last Night," taken from the famous John Donne poem.

Here's what Lewis says. I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the second coming of Jesus Christ than the conscientious revolutionary who has sincerely been justifying cruelties and injustices and maybe even violence inflicted on many of his contemporaries because of the benefits he hopes to confer on future generations. Generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist.

You see the doctrine of the second coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment. Therefore, precisely because we cannot predict the moment, we must be ready at all moments.

Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by electric lights inside how a dress or how makeup will look by real daylight. That is very like the problem all of us have. We need to dress our souls not for the dim electric lights of the present world, but for the broad daylight of the next.

The good dress is the one that will face that irresistible light, that light which is so different from the light of this world, and yet even now we know just enough of it to take into account. So you see the idea of the imminent judgment of God, on the one hand, makes us say like John Donne, "What if the present were the world's last night?" Am I doing something right now that I wouldn't be embarrassed by? How will my makeup look in the broad daylight of eternity?

On the other hand, you look at everybody else out there and all these other people and instead of getting angry and bitter and feeling like why aren't they getting what they deserve? Only God has the right to judge other people because you're not innocent. Secondly, only God is wise enough to judge other people. You don't know what they deserve. You think you do. You don't know a zillionth of what they've been through. You don't know anything about their past or their background or what's going on inside. God does.

So only God has the right to judge, only God is wise enough to judge, and only God can. He's the only one that's got the reach. And so what happens is the doctrine of judgment day turns you into a humble person who's gracious to everybody else and says I'm not sure what they deserve, God's going to handle that. And in the end, no one's going to get away with anything. I can relax.

And now for maybe the most fun part about this doctrine is when it says, look, he is coming with the clouds. And all the Bible scholars have always pointed out it doesn't say he's coming through the clouds like incoming and he's got to push the clouds away. It doesn't say he's coming on the clouds like he's riding. It says he's bringing the clouds with him.

He's coming with clouds. And we're not talking therefore about moisture in the atmosphere. We're talking about the clouds of God's Shekinah glory. He's bringing the presence of God back to heal the world of everything that's wrong with it. He's bringing the presence of God, the glory of God back to get rid of all suffering and all evil and all death.

And we're told that's the reason we're told Psalm 96 says that then will the trees of the wood sing and dance and clap their hands for joy. They're going to come alive. Why? Because he comes to judge the earth. Judge! He's coming with the clouds.

Do you believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world? The imminent, the any moment? Do you? If you do, the poise, the joy, the graciousness, the ability to forgive, all of that flows out of it. Have you got it? That's only the first point. I should go home right now, but we have two more.

The second thing is not so much about Jesus, though he's come, he's come. The second point is about John, though he's stunned, he's still alive. Now what do we mean by that? When John turns around to see Jesus, what a sight. Unbelievable. He says literally—this must have been something for John, the beloved disciple who knew the human Jesus Christ on earth, the incarnate human Jesus Christ—to see him like this.

He says it was like looking right into the sun. It was like looking into the sun. It was like feeling a furnace at full blast. And it was like listening to all the oceans of the world roar at once. Tom Skinner, an African American minister who passed away some years ago from Harlem—and I once heard a testimony about how he came to faith in Christ—he says when he was a kid growing up, he went to Sunday school but he saw Sunday school pictures of Jesus Christ. And you know what those Sunday school pictures of Jesus look like.

Perfectly coiffed, soft-focus guy knocking at the door. And Tom Skinner said growing up he looked at those pictures and he said I don't know who that guy is, but all I know is he wouldn't last ten minutes in my neighborhood. But what about this Jesus? The real Jesus. In fact, what does the book of Revelation—you know what the word Revelation means? You can go to chapter 1, verse 1. It says it's the revelation of Jesus. It's Jesus unveiled.

This Jesus, yeah, will last in that neighborhood. As a matter of fact, the real question is: will the neighborhood last with Jesus? And not only that, how can anybody stand before this Jesus? And of course we're told they can't because it says when I saw him, verse 17, I fell at his feet as though dead. But you know what? The operative word is "as though." He didn't fall dead. He just felt he was dying, but he fell as if dead. And that is so significant.

Guest (Female): Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book, "Rediscovering Jonah," Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross. During the month of May, we'll send you a copy of "Rediscovering Jonah" as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com/give. That's gospelinlife.com/give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller: All of the descriptions of Jesus Christ in this wonderful vision—if we went through them almost phrase by phrase—you could pick every single one of them out of the Old Testament. Revelation is more rooted in the Old Testament than any other New Testament book.

Every single one of the descriptors of Jesus Christ is taken from some description of a vision of God himself in the Old Testament. There's actually no place in the Bible making a stronger claim of the absolute supreme deity of Jesus Christ than these verses.

In other words, you go to Daniel 7, you go to Ezekiel 43, you go to Isaiah 11, you see all these descriptions of the Lord God, and here they are describing Jesus. But the most of all, most important of all, is when it says his face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. And boy, what does that mean?

Here's one thing we know. If you look right—if you take your eyes and you set them right on the sun shining in all its brilliance, you'll never see another thing the rest of your life. It'll burn your retinas out. And God, over and over again in the Old Testament, said no man or woman can look upon my face and live. It is death to see my face.

And yet here, on the one hand, is Jesus Christ's face shining with the glory of God, shining with the fatal brilliance of God. And yet not only is John not killed, though smitten to the ground, he's stunned, but Jesus himself touches him and says don't be afraid.

In Daniel chapter 10, there is a place where the prophet Daniel has a vision of God, and God appears to him and actually he looks exactly like this. Commentators for years have noticed that when God shows up, the Lord Jehovah, Yahweh shows up in Daniel chapter 10 and Daniel sees him, he looks very much like Jesus here.

And we're told that Daniel falls to the ground as dead. But we're also told in that chapter an angel comes and touches him. An angel puts his hand on his shoulder. An angel says don't be afraid. An angel comforts him. An angel tells him more.

The Lord Yahweh himself can't do that; that would be fatal. And yet here we have the claim that Jesus Christ is Yahweh himself, is the Lord himself, is the supreme deity himself, and he has the Shekinah glory coming out of his face. And yet it's Jesus who touches, Jesus who comforts, and John is not killed. He's stunned but so alive.

You know why that's so significant? To understand the significance you've got to go look at Genesis 2 and then Isaiah 6 and then come back here to Revelation 1 and draw a line through them. And then you'll see what a story.

In Genesis 2, we're told we were built for the face of God. In Genesis 2, we're taught in the Garden of Eden that all the love you've ever looked for in all other relationships, all of the assurance of your significance and your value that you've been seeking in all of your life pursuits, and all of the beauty that you have sought in landscapes or places or art or music or people, all the beauty, all the significance, all the love is in his face.

Psalm 16 says in his face there is fullness of joy. Everything you've ever wanted is there. Why? Because he's the Alpha and he's the Omega. What does that mean? You were built by him and you were built for him. You were built for him.

All the other loves, all the other beauties, all the other pursuits are just crumbs compared to that. You were built for the face and the presence of God. To bask in that presence, to behold that presence, to love that presence, to adore and praise him in his presence is to your soul what water is to a dying fish. It's life itself and there's no substitute for it.

But then you scroll to Isaiah 6. In Isaiah 6, we have the prophet Isaiah being ushered into the presence of God. And even though he never actually sees his face—that would be fatal—just getting even near his feet, just even getting near his presence is agony. It's pain. It's traumatic. And Isaiah says I'm coming apart. I'm going to die. Now wait a minute.

How could the thing that we most need be the thing that we most fear? How could the thing that we most need to live in its undiluted form be the one thing that can actually destroy us? How could that be? It's sin. Do you understand the conundrum here? What is sin?

Sin is that aspect of our heart that makes us want to center everything on ourselves instead of God. We do things—we might love God and do things for God—but everything is centered on us. We'll do things if they make us happy, if they further our interests, if they make us feel good about ourselves.

Our self-image, our life—everything is based on us. And so we base our self-image not on God, we base our sense of worth not on God, but on: am I a good person, or a decent person, or a cool hip person, or an accomplished person? And anybody with a self-image built like that—as sin does make us build it—cannot stand the presence of superlativeness.

If you think you're smart and you're really proud of being smart and it's very important to you and you get near somebody who's ten times smarter than you, it doesn't feel good. Same thing with athletic prowess, same thing with looks, same thing with money, same thing with anything. You suddenly don't feel good. You don't like it. Why? It's your self-image being crushed by the weight of the person's superlativeness.

And if we feel that way about human superlativeness, what is it like to come into the presence of God? It's decimating. It's incinerating. It's agonizing. To fix your heart on being your own master and then come into the presence of the ultimate true master is death.

For a human being, a sinful human being, to get into the presence of God is death. No man can look upon my face and live. And yet I'm built to look on his face. And yet I can't look on his face. By the way, this explains everything about the human race, all of its conundrums, all of its paradoxes.

But now suddenly in Revelation 1, something has happened. Something has happened because in Daniel chapter 10, when the Lord appears and his prophet falls to the ground as dead, somebody else has to touch him. God can't touch him. But here it's the Lord himself whose face is shining. He touches him and says don't be afraid. How can this be?

And the answer is let's go back to the first point. Secular people say there is no judgment day. Evil and suffering are never really going to be resolved. Conservative people say yes, there is a judgment day and you better be really good, really, really, really good.

But the gospel says the judge at the end of time entered history in the middle of time and took our judgment for us. He says don't be afraid. What? I was dead. Don't be afraid. I have the keys of death and hell, Hades. I died for you. I went to hell for you. I was judged for you. So now you can have a touch. So now you can be comforted. So now you can live in my presence and bit by bit by bit, even in this world, get more and more used to the joy of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's pretty significant.

So do you see the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world and you see the fact that through what Jesus Christ did, you have been now admitted into the presence of God and that is your future? But there's one more thing that we're told here. The third contrast is suffering but brilliant. And that you see actually in verse 13. What are the lampstands?

The lampstands are the churches. And we're the churches. It's actually a fine image that we'll get back to when we go through these letters. The idea that we are—Redeemer is a church—we're a lampstand and that means we are to be God's light in a dark world. It's a great idea, great illustration.

But the important thing that you get to know in the book of Revelation is that these churches are going through suffering. You know the first hymn that we sang, "We come, O Christ, to you"? I chose this as a hymn for us to sing in the early days of Redeemer. And it was written by Margaret Clarkson for the Urbana Missions conferences.

And that's the reason why the last verse has "We worship you, Lord Christ, our Savior and our King, to you our youth and strength adoringly we bring." And I've been singing this for years and I've been singing it even as I'm getting older and older and have less and less youth and strength to give.

We're still a really young church and it's still quite a right. We're one of the younger churches you'll find anywhere. On the other hand, it strikes me that as John is writing this book, he's an old man now. The fact of the matter is the older you get, the more suffering you see, the more suffering you know about, the less sanguine you are about life. Not only the more suffering you've felt, but the more of your friends have been through it. The older you get, the more you realize life is hard, then you die.

And here is John in exile on the island of Patmos. Here is John knowing the churches that he's ministered to are going to be going through some incredible persecution. Some of it's named in the book of Revelation. You know what some of those things were? Some Christians are going to be impaled on a pole, covered with pitch and lit while still alive.

Some Christians are going to be thrown to the lions. Some Christians—there's going to be such masses of Christians crucified at once that they're going to line the roads in and out of Rome so travelers can watch the people die as they go on vacation. Some people are going to have holes drilled in their skull and molten metal poured in while still alive.

And in the midst of these beaten, bloodied, battered people, this magnificent figure is walking, verse 13. He's in the middle of the lampstands. And he's walking as if he's in a furnace. And by the way, affliction is often called a furnace in the Bible.

And you know what? There's no way you can study this passage, the book of Revelation—almost every verse reminds you of Daniel—and not at this point be reminded of Daniel chapter 3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, believers, wouldn't worship the emperor, just like these people, and they were thrown into a furnace. And the furnace was so hot that even the men who were throwing them into the furnace died in the process.

And so the king, Nebuchadnezzar, looks into the furnace and expecting to see maybe a hand like this and a few bodies incinerated. Instead he sees men walking around, not consumed by the fire. But even though they only threw three in, he sees a fourth man in there. Four walking around. And the fourth one is like the Son of God. That's what the text says.

And this is God's way of making good on his promise in Isaiah 43: "Fear not, I have redeemed you; I have called you by name. Fear not, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I'll be there and when you walk through the fire you will not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon you, for I am the Lord."

Now what did that mysterious figure in the flames in Daniel 3 mean? Now we know what it means. Look, when Jesus Christ says, "I have the keys to death and hell, Hades," what does he mean? I went into the fire. Our God doesn't just look at us in the furnace of affliction and feel bad for us and feel sympathy. Our God actually, in the form of Jesus Christ, came into this world and on the cross was plunged into the ultimate furnace.

The ultimate furnace which we've been looking at is the judgment of God. The ultimate furnace is the loss of the face of the Father. It's the disintegration, it's the agony. He went into the ultimate furnace, hell. He got the ultimate persecution, the ultimate suffering. He is literally walking in the furnace with us.

But actually, think of it this way. Until you see that Jesus Christ took the ultimate furnace for you, he actually won't be walking with you in your penultimate furnaces with you. If you see he walked in the ultimate furnace for you, then you will know he's with you in your penultimate furnaces.

And in your penultimate furnaces—not going to hell, but the rejections and the debts and the physical problems that you are facing—you will find that the flame will not kindle on you, but instead you'll be refined. You'll become beautiful, you'll become brilliant like him. You'll be refined like gold.

Well, how does it work? It's actually not that hard and yet it's very hard. Do you believe that Jesus Christ took the ultimate furnace for you? Do you believe he did all this? Now then tell yourself this: the ultimate furnace is gone. The ultimate debt is paid. The great love that I'm looking for in my life is actually waiting for me and the ultimate wealth is in my account eternally.

And if you know this, and to the degree you know this, and to the degree you grasp this, all other debts, all other afflictions, all other rejections are small by comparison and you can walk in your suffering and find instead of it making you more bitter and more angry and more awful, instead it'll make you wiser and better and deeper and kinder because you'll say I can face this for you, Jesus, because it's nothing compared to what you faced for me.

Rudyard Kipling says, "What should they know of England who only England know?" What does he mean? What he's saying is if you really want to understand your country, you need to get out of your country. If you live your whole life in your country, there's too much about it that you can't see. You don't understand your own culture.

So if you want to really get into your country, first get out of your country, get some perspective. You know what the Bible's trying to say? He is the Alpha. If you want to get into yourself, if you want to understand yourself, you've got to get out of yourself. You've got to start with him.

Or better yet, get out of your suffering. Get out of your self-pity. Get out of looking at yourself and saying why, why, why, why? And get into his and see what he did. And if you get out of your own into his, you will find you'll understand your own and your own won't consume you. It won't incinerate you. It'll beautify you. It'll polish you. For after all, Jesus said to Paul, not to John, "My power is made perfect in weakness." My power is made perfect in weakness.

Let's pray. Our Father, the images of Revelation are so dizzying and can be confusing. But as we sit and think and ponder together what you are saying to us in this book, we see you are saying it doesn't matter how bad things are, I'm in charge. You're in my hand, I'm in your midst, I'm there with you. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand.

We pray, Father, that you would help us to grasp these great doctrines about what your Son did in order to open the way to your face and presence and love. How you are going to come back and judge all things and how you're with us in our furnaces of affliction. We pray that you would just help us to apply these things by the Holy Spirit. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thank you for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2008. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.