Sunday, November 25, 2007

Revelation 1:4-8 "Jesus Is Coming"

I did not like this sermon terribly well on paper. It did not flow and I was a bit worried about preaching it. But, as usual, I was surprised when I did preach it as it really did preach well. Of course, some things were changed as I preached the message. I spent more time on the idea of worship being connected to heaven (as the story of the Orthodox Church coming to Russia led me). But here is the sermon in its written (somewhat weak) form.

My mother doesn’t like watching movies with sad endings. Her reasoning behind this is quite simple. She feels that she has enough bad things that she has to deal with in real life, enough things to make her feel bad about the world around her. This is especially true as she works at a hospital and often sees people in bad situations. When she wants to take a break from the world, when she wants to relax and sit down to something that she hopes she will enjoy, she wants it to end on a positive note.

When we have watched a movie that we wanted her to see, often the movie will have a part of it where things aren’t going well, but if we assure her that the movie ends well, she will often be able to make it through the difficult parts. And a good, strong, happy ending often makes the hard times in a movie or a book well worth it.

Today we are celebrating “Christ the King” Sunday. This is the week that we celebrate that Jesus is going to return to this earth in power and in glory. He is going to right all the wrongs and put an end to sin and evil. This is the week where we look forward to what is to come and allow ourselves to hold fast to the promise. Like my mom and movies, we can find strength through the difficult times in our lives because we know that there is a happy ending. We know that Jesus is triumphant; we know that we have picked the winning side. And hopefully this gives us strength, hopefully this gives us courage, hopefully this allows us what we need to make it through the difficult times, the hard times in our lives.

Let us open in prayer

I. The Beginning and the End

The book of Revelation can be confusing. It can be so confusing that it actually comes with a warning label. Now, when you go to a store and look at music or DVDs you will see them rated so you know what it is you will get. The book of Revelation is sort of like this. Except the warning label isn’t on the cover, it’s at the end of the book, after you’ve read it. It tells us that if you hear the words of prophecy in this book and add to them or subtract from them, the same will happen to you. And yet I know of a lot of people who have added or subtracted from the words and prophecies of Revelation. It is hard to read the book of Revelation without adding to it or subtracting from it, without working through it to try to make it make sense in some way. Many churches have avoided this by avoiding the book altogether, but this also can be dangerous, as the book of Revelation has something important to say to each of us.

But I know that it took me a while to find out what the important thing that Revelation had to say was. Eventually, though, it did come to me, and I don’t mean that it came to me through some great revelation or great epiphany, it came to me as I studied the book with fellow students in college. We discovered and we realized that the book of Revelation isn’t as much about laying out the future as it is about worshipping God and Jesus. It is a book about worship. John, when he receives this great vision tries to kneel down and worship the angel who is sharing this vision with him, and the angel says to worship God alone.

Throughout Revelation people are worshipping all sorts of things, and the true church, the real Christians are the ones who worship God alone. And, I think this is where it becomes most clear, this vision was given to a church who was facing persecution and even death for their faith. If they chose not to follow the worship practices of the world around them, they could die for this. And Revelation offers real and strong hope to them. It tells them that the world will seem to get horrible, but in the end they will join with all of God’s saints in worshipping Jesus at the foot of his throne.

The beginning and the end of the book talk about the fact that Jesus is coming again. The book automatically shows us that God’s idea of time is a bit different from ours, because Jesus says that he is coming back soon, and it’s been 1900 years since this was written. But this does not mean that we can ignore the promise here at the beginning and the end of the book. Jesus will come back again, he will come back in glory and bring an end to the evil in this world. This becomes very real and a very important part of the book when we realize what it is that the people the book was being sent to were going through. We see how important it is when we notice that the words we read this morning from Revelation 1, specifically verses seven and eight are repeated, at some points almost word for word, in Revelation 22, verses 12-13, “Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” And then, at the very, absolute end of the book, at verse 20, again we here, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

When all else is said and done, when you’ve plugged in the maps of how the last days are going to work themselves out, when you’re done trying to figure out who the Anti-Christ is or the ten headed dragon or the new city of Babylon, the center of this book is there right at the beginning and right at the end. Jesus is coming back. He will return with a great reward and all people will bow before him. And here we are, in the midst of everything in this world, and we have the opportunity to bow before him now.

II. Why Worship

One might ask why it is that we worship God. After all, why do we need to sing him praise, without our songs of worship and praise is God any less holy or righteous or great? Of course not. But we worship him because it is a response to what he has done for us. I like to tell people that the reason for worship is that we are responding to the great things that God has done. We are saying thank you, we are reminding each other of how great our God is, we are reminding ourselves of God’s work in this world. Worship is our time to think back on the ways that God has been faithful to us and remind ourselves of the great things that God has done.

We are about to reset the clock on the church year and prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming and birth. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent and we remember those who awaited the coming of the Messiah with bated breath. And we remember that with the knowledge that the Messiah did come and did great things in his time on this planet. And at Eastertide we celebrate Jesus’ greatest accomplishment, his resurrection from the dead. In worship we remember the great things that God has done. We act them out in unique and powerful ways.

But we also remember that the story isn’t over, we aren’t just remembering that Christ came 2000 years ago, born of a virgin, teaching and preaching around Galilee, suffering and dying for our sins, being raised from the dead to reign with God the Father. The Bible tells a great story of God interacting with God’s people again and again and continuing to work in their lives to bring them closer to him. But the story presented in the Bible, is not over. We haven’t yet seen the ending. Today we celebrate that the ending is yet to come, and a glorious ending will it be. You see, we worship God because of what he has done, but that isn’t the only reason we worship him. We also worship him because of what he is yet to do.

Not only that, worship is a piece of how we experience heaven. The story is told of how Christianity was introduced to Russia. More than 1000 years ago Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev was interested in selecting an appropriate religion for his new nation. His emissaries investigated the main religions of the day, including Roman Catholicism and Islam. But it was only after visiting the church in Constantinople, where the Orthodox Church was based that they found what they were looking for. In their report to the duke, the emissaries noted that in Orthodox worship there was such solemn splendor that they had a hard time knowing whether they were in heaven or on earth.

Now we can argue about the concept of a leader of a country deciding the religion and faith of his people and we can argue a bit about the wonders of the Orthodox faith, but this story does give us a great example of what our worship has the opportunity to be. It is our chance to not only remember the past and what God has done for us, but it also is the opportunity for us to experience a glimpse of heaven even now.

III. The New Heaven and the New Earth

Jesus is coming again. It could be today, it could be another 1000 years from now. We don’t know the day nor the hour, but we do know that he will return, and it will be glorious. Do you see the hope that this offers us? We have a happy ending to look forward to and so we can face whatever difficulties we worry about. The concerns, the pains, the trials that are so very real to you today, that seem overwhelming, will be as nothing compared to the joy and contentment you will experience when Jesus returns. Though this present earth is messed up and full of evil, the new earth will truly be a glorious thing.

We worship a king who will be a just and mighty ruler. We worship a king who will protect us from all evil and keep us from all pain. We worship a king who will not lord it over us but will welcome us along with all of his subjects to the great banquet feast. Heaven is a wonderful thing to look forward to; it is a glorious future for us. And it is really in or future. It isn’t some myth that we’re being sold. It isn’t a placebo to help us get through our difficult lives. It is a true hope of what is to come.

So let us live our lives looking forward. Let us catch a glimpse of Christ, our King, who will take us to a better place: a place of glory, a place of peace. Let us worship God today knowing that we will join with all people to worship him on that last day. And let us catch a glimpse of that great promise, that Christ is coming again and we have something amazing and wonderful to look forward to. Amen.

No comments: