His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt says expect to be blessed as you study Revelation with us here on His Perfect Love.

Matt VanderVen: Revelation, I mentioned to you, we're going to take our time. We're going to take our time and really go through to make sure we understand His unveiling.

The blessing, or if I could say it this way, the supreme blessing that He really wants to unveil to you and I here this morning is learning more about Himself. A depth of relationship, knowing the person that we call our Lord and our Savior in a more intimate way.

You can't rush that. Just like any other relationship in your life, you can't rush it. It takes time to build that, and that's exactly what He's doing here with us.

Larry: Thanks for starting the week off together with us on His Perfect Love. Pastor Matt VanderVen is in the early stages of a study in Revelation. And as he mentioned a moment ago, we're going at a rather slow pace intentionally.

As we continue our introduction today, we'll gather some historical context that will serve as an important foundation, and we'll also discover there's a blessing that comes to those that read, hear, and obey these words in Revelation. But first, Pastor Matt speaks for a moment about what the church is to be all about in these last days.

Matt VanderVen: What are you and I to do today? What have we been commanded by the scriptures to do today? Again, God didn't leave us without an instruction manual. He didn't leave us to form our own opinions about this. I'm thankful for that, and it's sobering and humbling. In 1 Corinthians, please turn in your Bibles, 1 Corinthians 15:58.

What did Jesus command the church to do? The ecclesia? In this church age, in this dispensation of grace? 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 58. I'm incredibly thankful for this because we don't have to wonder. He says in 1 Corinthians 15:58, "Stand firm."

It's the first thing he commands us to do. Stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord. What does that mean in the English? I mean, we can read it here. In the Greek, what does that look like? It means always. We know what always means. Give yourselves fully.

What is fully? Does that mean partially or does that mean completely? To the work of self? Hobbies? Importance? Things that we determined are useful and fun? No, that's not in your translation. That must be the Matt VanderVen translation. No, that's not what this says. We care about the Lord, the Masoretic text, the Greek. He says "the work of the Lord."

Because he even gives us the reason. You know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. He says absolutely without any doubt, the work that you are doing—and he calls it labor. What we do is real hard work. It's not easy, and it comes at a cost. But there's labor to this.

And being a Christian has labor involved because it's not about being comfortable or what's easy for you and I. We would all love to hear that. We would all love to have our ears tickled that way this morning. But he said no, we are to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord.

That is what the ecclesia is here for. Because there are men and women walking around, children, that don't know Jesus Christ. So we need to be giving ourselves fully to that. If I was to say to you—and we're going to get into this passage a little bit later as we look at it—when he says the time is near. But if I was to say to you this morning, you only have 24 hours to live.

What would you do with the next 24 hours? I mean, really think about that. You've probably pondered it in your head or thought about it before. But if you knew you only had 24 hours to live, would you want to gather your family members around, the people that you love, your saved family, and maybe have a time of worship and just really enjoy the last 24 hours on this earth with brothers and sisters in Christ?

It's certainly not a terrible thing. It's not wrong. It's good. We love to be together. Or do you think the last 24 hours would be better spent with perfect strangers that we don't know, or prodigals, or people like that, that we know that when we leave this earth, God's hand and the Spirit is going to be removed and there's going to be a great tribulation that's going to come like in nothing else a human being's ever experienced?

We're going to read that as we go through this book. As we get into chapter six and we start looking at the billions of people that are going to literally suffer and die in just horrible ways because of the judgment of rejecting Jesus Christ. So if you had the last 24 hours, how would you want to spend that?

Would you rather spend that with the people that you love and know are going to be with Jesus, or would you rather spend that with the people you don't know so that they can become born-again believers and spend eternity with you in Jesus? Because I assure you that you can catch up with everybody else in heaven at that time. Amen?

It's a different perspective, isn't it? That's eternal thinking. But I'm not anyone's Holy Spirit. That's something I guess we all have to make individually as a decision. But how we spend that time and who we'd be with is interesting if we knew we had the last 24 hours. It might also reveal where our hearts at on certain things.

As we're going to read in chapter two, the church is set before us as a figure of seven churches that were real churches in the existence of John's day. The church is not mentioned again in the book of Revelation after chapter three. And you may wonder why? Where's the church then? Well, as we read, she leaves the earth and she goes to heaven and she appears to be with the bride of Christ with Jesus as the bride of Christ. Excuse me.

When we see her in the last part of Revelation, she's not the church, but the bride. Now the beginning with chapter four is where we're going to understand this—everything is definitely future from a vantage point and present time. When we get to chapter four in Revelation, it's all forward.

And the book of Revelation may be enfolded as follows: In chapter one, again, it's not just the suffering servant, it's now the glorified Christ. It's the glorified king. Chapters two and three, we see the churches. Chapters four and five, we see the church in heaven. Then on earth, the great tribulation takes place from chapter six through 18.

In chapter 19, we see that Christ returns to the earth and establishes his kingdom. You and I are coming with him, the bride of Christ. In chapter 20, he gives us a thousand-year reign of Christ where the theocracy happens on the earth. Then there's the great white throne judgment. It's set up and the place where the lost are judged begins. And then in chapters 21 and 22, technically, eternity begins then.

And the book—this is the book of Revelation. Some additional background may be helpful in regards to the historical context that's written and why I believe John was matter-of-fact in some of these things, but more importantly why Jesus was unveiling. Because the suffering that was going on... Domitian was the emperor.

But unlike Nero, Domitian was the first emperor that waged a war or a campaign specifically against Jesus Christ. The church answered back under the leadership of the apostle John, who was the last apostle alive at this point, some 80 years old. All the other ones had been martyred. Now you might be thinking, "Well, what about Nero?"

Nero had Peter and Paul destroyed, but he looked upon them as seditious Jews. Domitian, though, was the first emperor to understand that behind the Christian movement, there stood Jesus, who threatened the glory of all the emperors. He was the first to declare war on Jesus. Domitian was. And not the first to lose that war. A foretaste of the things to come.

Now, the last book of our Old Testament is the book of Malachi, right? And if you think about Malachi chapter 4 verse 2, it closes by mentioning the sun, S-U-N, of righteousness, which is yet to arrive. It holds out hope of the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation closes with the bright and morning star, a figure of Christ and his coming to take the church out of the world.

The rapture is the hope of the New Testament, just as the revelation of Christ was the hope of the Old Testament. And the book of Revelation will complete with the revelation of Christ, the unveiling of Christ. Now, I'd also like to point out a couple of things that's interesting from the book of Genesis and Revelation. You also have some of this in your outline.

But the first and last books of the Bible—just like Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last—these two books, Genesis and Revelation, bookend our Bibles. And it's really interesting what we see on both of these, and what he started in Genesis and unveiled to us there, and then what Revelation unveils to us at the closing of this.

In Genesis, the earth was created. In Revelation, the earth passes away. In Genesis was Satan's first rebellion. In Revelation is Satan's last rebellion. In Genesis, the sun, moon, and stars were for earth government. In Revelation, these heavenly bodies are for earth's judgment. In Genesis, the sun was to govern the day. In Revelation, there's no need for a sun.

In Genesis, darkness was called night. In Revelation, there is no night there. You can look at that in Revelation chapter 21 verse 25. There is no night as we understand night anymore. In Genesis, the waters were called seas. In Revelation, there is no more sea. The only thing that we read about in Revelation is a body of water, if I can even call it that, which is more like a stream that runs right down the middle of the city, but it's hardly a sea.

So those that love to surf and all that, you may be able to do a lot of things in heaven, but you're not going to be surfing. But it's interesting because we see the beginning and this idea of the seas, and then we see of how God culminates that and there is no more sea. In Genesis, it was the entrance of sin. In Revelation, it's the departure from sin.

In Genesis, the curse is pronounced. In Revelation, the curse is removed. In Genesis, death enters. In Revelation, there is no more death, Hallelujah. In Genesis, sorrow and suffering were beginning. In Revelation, there will be no more sorrow, no more suffering, and no more tears. In Genesis, the marriage of the first Adam is a marriage. In Revelation, it is the marriage of the last Adam.

The wedding feast of the Lamb. In Genesis, we saw man city Babylon being built. In Revelation, we see man city Babylon destroyed and God's city, the new Jerusalem, brought into view. In Genesis, Satan's doom is pronounced. In Revelation, Satan's doom is executed. Interestingly, Genesis opens the Bible not only with a global view, but with a universal view.

Think about it. "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1. And the Bible closes with another global and universal view. The Revelation shows what God is going to do with his universe and with his creation. If you think about it, there is no other book on earth like your Bible, like the book of Revelation.

So it's with that I'd like us to turn back to chapter one and verse one. That concludes my introduction of the book so that we have a good, solid foundation. Last week we got through part of verse one. It says "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him." You remember that? It was the apocalypsis, the unveiling of Jesus, which God—theos—it constructed two words, Elohim in the Greek, which means Jehovah.

Also Elohim, which is God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He says "gave him," gave what? Him, Jesus, to show his servants. That's the Greek word doulos. That was you and I, bondslaves, bondservants, okay? Things which must—and here's our next Greek word—shortly. Tachos. I told first service, I says, "You guys are going to be good, but second service, we're close to lunch."

I start saying things like tachos, I know where your brains go. Right in your bellies. I won't call you Babylonian priests, it's okay. He says the things which must shortly take place. This word tachos, just look at it with me for a minute. It means to quickness, to speed. It literally means with speed or shortly. It's used eight times in the New Testament.

It's where we get our English word for tachometer. You have them in your vehicles or your motorcycle. It's a tachometer. It describes that when the events of Revelation begin to unfold, they will unfold in a very rapid succession and progression. It's telling us and the way Jesus is using this word is he's saying the things which must progress when these things happen and Revelation begins the unveiling, the actual events begin to unfold.

It's going to happen so fast and so quick that people are going to literally be astonished because tachos, that's what it means. It means a quick succession and progression. It's not like this: okay, here and then here. It's going to be boom, boom, boom, boom. That's what he's trying to communicate. Not shortly as in a period of time necessarily, as much as he's trying to tell us the quick progression of the events that are going to take place.

And he sent and signified. Now this is another really interesting word here, signified. It's our next Greek term. If you look at this word, it means to give a sign, to signify and to indicate. It means to be literally—to make known absolutely. Why is this word here? There's so many other Greek words, seven in particular I can count, that Jesus could have used when he's describing what he did by sending the angel to John.

That angel was meant to be a sign. When the angel went to John and was unveiling this Revelation, it was not just, "Oh, let's send an angel." It was supposed to be a sign, a marker to John to know that this is supernatural and not like any other vision or anything else he's ever received before. But it was significant.

And he used an angel to do it. And it was supposed to be a sign to not only the apostle John, but to you and I as born-again believers. It is supposed to be a sign to us that this has been authoritative. It's been marked. It's been signed in writing by the blood of the Lamb. That's how he wants us to understand the significance of this unveiling that he's given us.

And he said it was by his angel. Now, it's interesting if we look at that—we're told it's used six times in the New Testament. It's not a word used a lot. And it was sent to his servant John. He's called a servant just as we're called servants. He said who bore witness to the word of God. That word "witness" there means record, directly. A direct literal translation is that word "record."

It's actually where we will develop our English word for martyr. For martyr, okay? He said to the word of God, back to that "theos" word again. He chooses to use the word theos here, again telling us God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It means they're all in agreement. The triune God is in agreement with everything that's being unveiled to you and I here this morning. And that's what's communicated by that Greek word.

He says "and to the testimony," specifically calls it out now, again to the consummation, if I can say it that way, of Jesus by the work, by what he's done and by Jesus' ultimate authority here. Because he says it's of Jesus Christ. To all things that he saw. Everything that John did his very best to try to write down for you and I, which even in certain areas of the Bible were told are things that are unspeakable.

Unable to be written, unable to be spoken of. These things John, just like you and I as human beings, is doing the very best he can to try to describe these things to us. We are to take everything in the book of Revelation literally until John tells us, Jesus tells us otherwise, it is a picture for us or an illustration. The next word we see here: blessed.

Now you can look at this Greek word here. It means happy, right? But it's more than just a conditional happiness, like a feeling or emotion that comes and goes. The idea of blessedness here, it's used 50 times in our New Testament. It literally means to be blessed and happy. It's used seven times in the book of Revelation.

And we're going to look at those seven times in our remaining time this morning. Revelation 1:3, 14:13, 16:15, 19:9, 20:6, chapter 22 verse 7, and chapter 22 verse 14. The other significant thing is it's used 12 times in each of the book Matthew and Luke. However, if you study the book of Matthew as we have together as a church fellowship, you know that Matthew chapter 5 through 7 is called the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes.

It's like discipleship boot camp. So if you look at it, "blessed are those," "blessed are the..." He used it, but if you were to take that out, the repetitive aspect of the blessings as he's teaching us the Beatitudes and the disciples that, the book of Revelation has more blessing for the individual than any other book of the entire Bible. Seven times recorded, this word of blessing that he wants us to have.

And he's very specific here. He said "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear." Now that makes a lot of sense to me because this was written at the time when most of the earth was illiterate in regards to reading. Today we take it for granted that a majority of the earth can read and write. But at the time that this was given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a majority of the earth could not read or write.

And even then a majority of the earth was biblically illiterate kind of like it is today. Why? Because they didn't have Bibles. That's not the reason we have today, right? We have—you and I have—how many translations, how many different Bibles in our library? Back then they didn't have that. You know that came after the Reformation where that was then given to the individuals.

Before that, I know growing up, some of you maybe grew up like I did, or in a denomination... I grew up Roman Catholic, okay? And what happened when I was very, very young is you would go to church—they called it mass in Catholicism. And when you would walk into the door, the priest actually would turn and place his back to you. He would be facing the front of the—what he would call the altar of the sacrament.

And then when he did that, he would then begin to speak in Latin. And if you didn't understand Latin, you didn't get a lick of it. Other than you knew you had to stand up and—I mean, you got your workout in, right? 45 minutes later your knees—you felt like you moved and grooved. But to understand—and I'm not trying to offend anybody, please forgive me if that came off wrong.

But what I'm trying to say is you didn't understand what they were saying unless you spoke Latin. And that's why they actually taught Latin in a lot of the parochial schools and even some of the public schools actually taught Latin early on was because the masses were actually all conducted in Latin.

So just think about you and I. When he's saying "Blessed is he who reads," he was giving a blessing, Jesus Christ himself. He says, "Look, there's a blessing first of all for the one who teaches the word of God." Right? So a pastor, an undershepherd, a teacher. There's a blessing that's poured out on me right now because I'm doing this.

But there's also a blessing poured out in you because you have Bibles on your lap and you can read along with me. You're being blessed as well. But he also gives a blessing to those who hear. Because again, as I mentioned, so much of the first-century Christians were illiterate. They couldn't read or write. Some could, but not worldwide or a great population.

He said the words of this prophecy and those who keep these things which are written in it, for the time is near. So here's seven blessings that he has called out specifically. Now what is the supreme blessing? The blessing, or if I could say it this way, the supreme blessing that he really wants to unveil to you and I here this morning is learning more about himself. A depth of relationship.

Larry: You're listening to His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. We're just getting our study of Revelation underway. And Pastor Matt, you briefly mentioned there are seven blessings spoken of here in Revelation. Now, you'll get into that tomorrow, but can you give our listeners a brief rundown?

Matt VanderVen: Larry, the seven blessings of Revelation are found in Revelation chapter 1 verse 3, chapter 14 verse 13, chapter 16 verse 15, chapter 19 verse 9, chapter 20 verse 6, chapter 22 verse 7, and chapter 22 verse 14.

The first blessing is Revelation 1:3, "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take heart of what is written in it, because the time is near." The book of Revelation is unique in that it's the only book of the Bible with a direct blessing promised to those who publicly read it and their hearers.

The second blessing, Revelation, is found in Revelation chapter 14:13. He says, "Then I heard a voice from heaven say, 'Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.' 'Yes,' says the Spirit, 'they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.'" God pronounces this blessing just before the sevenfold judgments of Revelation 16. People who become believers and die during the tribulation will find rest and reward with the Lord.

The third blessing is found in Revelation chapter 16:15. "Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and shamefully exposed." Jesus is warning those in the tribulation just prior to the battle of Armageddon that he will soon come as a thief. Those who believe in him will be blessed.

The fourth blessing is found in Revelation chapter 19 verse 9. It says, "Then the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!'" And he added, "These are the true words of God." This marriage supper between the Lamb and his bride, the church, is going to take place in heaven, and God's people from all ages will be on hand to celebrate.

The fifth blessing is found in Revelation chapter 20 verse 6. "Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years."

The various resurrections mentioned in the Bible are divided really into two general categories. The first resurrection is the resurrection of the just, and the second resurrection is the unjust. Again, you can see that in Daniel chapter 12 verse 2, Luke 14:14, or Acts chapter 24 verse 15. The first resurrection leads to eternal life and, as I mentioned, the second resurrection leads to the second death. That's Revelation chapter 20 verses 13 through 15.

The sixth blessing is found in Revelation chapter 22 verse 7. He says, "Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll." Again, Jesus promises a blessing to those who keep or obey the teachings of Revelation. Reading and hearing the word is not enough if not followed by obedience.

And the seventh blessing is found in Revelation chapter 22 verse 14. "Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city." Salvation comes from having one's robes washed in the Lamb's blood. Revelation 7:14. Those are just a taste of the seven blessings that we'll read about in the book of Revelation.

Larry: Thanks, Pastor Matt. Again, we'll get into that in much greater detail tomorrow. And don't forget, you can access our studies in Revelation at hisperfectlove.org. You can also now hear our programs at oneplace.com and on most podcast platforms. There is much more to come in Revelation. Don't miss a moment of the journey here on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt.