I know why you people are here this weekend,
and you've come from lots of places and made sacrifices, and I know why you're here. And
I think it's pretty easy to reduce the kind of preaching ministry that goes on here to
two things -- two words: 'profound' and 'transcendent.' I believe preaching must do two things. Forget
the homiletics. Forget the cleverness. Forget the relevance. Preaching has to do two things:
it has to go down -- way down, past the surface -- down into the depths of the riches, of
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden below a cursory glance. And then
it has to go way up. It has to take you where you've never been and take you to the place
where you are, in the words of the hymn writer, "lost in wonder, love and praise". And preaching
that doesn't go down doesn't take people up. And for many of you, you live in the flat
line, somewhere in the middle, and you wait for an opportunity like this, don't you? In
many cases where the preaching is not profound, the worship is emotional manipulation, but
when you go down into the depths of the truth of God, your soul is saturated in the fountains
of the deep, as it were. You are then carried to the true heights of praise. And we've all
been wonderfully blessed to experience that already in just the hours we've been together.
It's an awesome thing to stand in this pulpit with these men and to endeavor to contribute
to this profound and hopefully transcendent experience, but I count it a great honor and
privilege to do this and to affirm the ministry of all those who minister with us this week
and particularly of my dear friend R.C. Sproul, with whom I rarely fellowship, but whose heartbeat
I feel, and who I listen to on the radio. 'The Holiness of Christ' -- what an inexhaustable
theme this is; the height and depth and breadth and knowledge of it will fill our perfected
wonder someday. It will occupy our holy fascination and our eternal curiosity. And I suppose I
feel today a little bit like the boy who was visiting the Atlantic Ocean for the first
time, took a little bottle and went down and filled the bottle with ocean water because
he wanted to take it back to Kansas and show his friends the Atlantic Ocean. Well, today
I bring you my little bottle. And where shall I go to fill it to show you the holiness of
Christ? I suppose I could go to Luke chapter 1 and we could talk about the announcement
of Gabriel who said to Mary that she would have a 'holy offspring.' Or we could go to
the testimony of God the Father who, at the baptism of Jesus in Luke chapter 4, gave His
affirmation of the holiness of Christ when He said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased," that is to say, 'He has never done anything that displeases Me.' We
could go the testimony of the Holy Spirit who descended upon Him in affirmation of that
singular union which They possess in the Holy Trinity; that same Holy Spirit who gave testimony
to the holiness of Christ through the very words of Christ, who confessed that He and
the Father are one. We could go through the epistles in the New Testament and hear, again,
the testimony, by the inspiring Holy Spirit through the writers, to the deity of Jesus
Christ and, consequently, His holiness. We could certainly go the book of Hebrews where
the Holy Spirit gives testimony to the holiness of Christ repeatedly. We could study the resurrection
and the ascension which are divine affirmations of the perfections of Christ. We could go
to the transfiguration, where we have a glimpse of unveiled holiness, a moment in which we
see the holy Christ without human limitations and hear the words of Peter who gave testimony
to that experience when he said, "We were eyewitnesses of His majesty." And as I was
thinking about what to do, my first thought was the transfiguration and then I thought
it's such a brief glimpse, can we go somewhere to extend it for a while? Can we get a little
fuller picture of the unveiled, holy glory of Christ? And the answer is, well, we can.
And I think the best water for my little bottle is Revelation chapter 1. So, if you will turn
in your Bibles to Revelation 1, you will be in the right spot. Revelation chapter 1. This is certainly the
most profoundly transcendent picture of Christ. As profound as it is and transcendent as it
is, I find it to be practical -- encouraging with regard to my own ministry and my own
life in the church. The church is called to be the all-beautiful bride of Christ, and
yet often appears more like a ragged Cinderella for whom the clock has struck midnight. And
we're burdened for the church. I'm burdened for the church. I write a lot of books addressing
issues in the church. I struggle in my own church. Those of us who are pastors are 'embattled,'
to put it mildly, in the life of the church. The concern for the church, Paul said in 2
Corinthians 11, was more painful than physical torture. We're concerned about the church.
You're concerned about the church. We long that people would have a deep, rich communion
with the living Christ. We desire that they would have power over temptation and over
sin, living triumphantly. We would long that they would passionately pursue holiness and
purity, that they would submit to the authority of the Word of God, God's holy truth that
sanctifies. And that there would be godly pastors. We all grieve and we all lose some
part of us when some pastor manages to catapult into darkness and scandalize the church. We
desire that the church would also be protected from deceivers and so we spend a lot of our
time watching and warning the church. And we long that the people of God would reflect
the glory of Christ to the end that the church would be the means, the instrument by which
the Lord graciously redeems His own. We look at the church and we see all these things
as compelling desires and, in reality, they seem so far away. It is easy to be discouraged.
Very, very discouraged. Most pastors that I meet have a measure of discouragement either
dominating their life or mingled in their encouragement somewhere. And I find, in this
vision of Christ, my encouragement. At the moment that the vision came to John, it wasn't
particularly encouraging -- as we will see -- but in retrospect, as we look back at it
from our perspective, for me I find myself finding comfort in this chapter as a pastor,
as one who loves the church. Because here is our holy Christ manifesting Himself in
transcendent glory in the midst of His church. This is tremendously encouraging to me. But before we get to me and to you, let's
go back to John. At the time that he received this vision, as you know, he was sitting on
a rock in the Mediterranean. It's called Patmos. I've been there and it's a rock. Five miles
wide at its widest point, ten miles long at its longest point, it juts up out of the Mediterranean
Sea. It's about forty miles from Miletus; forty miles from the coastal city connected
to the city of Ephesus where John had apparently ministered later in his life. And John was
on that rock -- the tradition says there's a special place there where John was when
he received the revelation. I happened to be there, of all things, on a Lord's Day and
received no such revelation. But I did read the one that he received. For those of us
who believe that John was writing about the future and not the past, John had lived to
see Jerusalem sacked. He had lived to see a million Jews slaughtered by the armies of
the Romans, Titus Vespasian in command. He had lived to hear of about 985 Jewish towns
and villages destroyed. Literally the vanquishing of Israel. And hope for the soon-establishment
of the kingdom of Christ had long faded. If you take a late date for the writing of this,
say 96, John is an old man. His life is nearly over. His friends, the apostles, have long
gone, most of them martyred. He's outlived them all. They were systematically terminated
by the Christ-haters. Nothing of all of that exciting, enthusiastic, exhilarating hope
that was burning in their hearts when they signed up to follow Jesus could be assumed,
on a human level, to have remained to this point in his life. There he is, doomed to
die as an exile on what essentially is a prison. Sentenced to hard labor, he is a criminal
-- if, in his nineties, he's enduring poor food, poor clothing, working hard, a brutal
life for an old man and likely, when he found sleep, it was on the ground. And if it wasn't
bad enough that all the hopes for the kingdom of Israel had been dashed, the church wasn't
doing well either. And he knew it. We believe that he ministered for a time, of course,
in Asia Minor, and that's where the seven churches are who received the letters that
the Lord gave in chapters 2 and 3. He knew those churches, and he must've known -- and
certainly it was confirmed to him by the letters he soon received -- that Ephesus had left
its first love and the Lord actually now is going to threaten to shut it down, which,
apparently, He did. Pergamus was idolatrous and immoral, and the Lord was about to fight
against that church. Thyatira was compromised with sin and worldliness and was facing judgement.
Sardis was just plain dead. And Laodicea was nauseating. Here's the old man, who once had
all the hope, in exile. Brutal circumstances. The hope for a kingdom to Israel dashed. The
church in horrifying disarray. A bleak picture. A man desperately in need of comfort and some
word of hope for the future. I guess maybe I identify with John. I see the Ephesian churches
who leave their first love. I see the Pergamum churches who are idolatrous and immoral. I
see the Thyatiras. I see the dead Sardis churches. I see the Laodicean, nauseating apathy. We
see it, whether it's liberalism, or legalism, or heresy, or man-centeredness, or carnality,
or apathy, or materialism, or whatever. We ache for the church. We, like John, need to
see a vision of what Christ is doing in His church. And that's what we see here. Verse 9: "I, John" -- that's the third time
he's referred to himself in the opening, because I think he's always in a state of shock that
he is the instrument by which the Lord is revealing this. "I, John, your brother and
fellow partaker" -- and that's why it is such a shock, because he sees himself as equal
to everybody else. 'Why me to receive such immense privileges as I am now writing down
to you?' "I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and
perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of
God and the testimony of Jesus." And that tells us why he was there. He was there because
the Christ-haters had put him there because they deemed that preaching the truth of Jesus
Christ was a crime. And, in verse 10, he says, "I was in the Spirit." What does that mean?
Well, it means 'I was subject to supernatural revelation,' 'I was beyond human senses,'
'I was given the privilege of apprehending that which is supernatural.' And it happened
that it was on the Lord's Day. Since the second century, the church has almost universally
viewed that as not an eschatological term for the Day of the Lord, a different term,
but the hapax legomena here, the one use of this in the New Testament, has to do with
Sunday. Since the second century, we have called it 'the Lord's Day.' It was a Sunday
on Patmos. And, on a particular Sunday, John was lifted beyond human sense and he said,
"I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying, 'Write in a book what
you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and
to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.'" It was only Smyrna and
Philadelphia who were not indicted by the Lord. The rest, as I noted, received a serious
and severe indictment. And, by the way, those seven cities are the postal centers of Asia
Minor. In fact, they are even in sequence, starting at Ephesus. That was the postal route
that the mail went, in that very order, as indicated in verse 11. The voice then says
to John, "Write down what you see and send it to the churches." In verse 12: "Then I turned to see the voice
that was speaking with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands." Now he moves
into the vision. From the audible voice he moves into the vision itself and the first
element that he sees is seven golden lampstands. Drop down to verse 20 for a moment where the
Lord Himself explains that; in the middle of the verse, the seven golden lampstands.
What are they? Further to the end of the verse: "the seven lampstands are the seven churches."
Seven churches. They are symbolized by light. A lampstand was a tall rod that had a platform
on the bottom to sit on the floor and a platform on the top, and you set an oil-burning lamp
-- which was basically a kind of a dish with oil in it and a wick dropped in the top -- and
you lit it and it provided obvious light. And that symbolizes the church. It symbolizes
all churches. There were actually seven churches in Asia Minor, these seven, and it is a true
representation of the character of those churches in chapters 2 and 3. But they are also symbolic
of the church. As we know, seven can be a number that represents completeness, and I
think that's what you have here. Here is a picture of the church in its varied or variegated
manner. He turns and he sees the seven golden lampstands. And then in verse 13 (and now
we get into what we really want to address with you this morning): "in the middle of
the lampstands -- one like a son of man." John hears the voice, he turns, and he looks,
he sees the seven lampstands and in the midst is the unveiled Christ in holy glory standing
the middle of His church. I think sometimes, for us, we may feel that the Lord has abandoned
His church. John may've felt that. He may've wondered what was going on in Israel, first
of all. I think that's what was on the mind of Isaiah when Isaiah, in chapter five, received
all the revelations of woe against Israel. The question that came into his mind must've
been 'if God is going to send this great army [at the end of chapter five] and destroy Israel,
what's happening?' And I think the reason he went to the temple in chapter six was to
check in and see if God was still on the throne! And that's why that vision begins, that immediately
he saw the Lord high and lifted up and, you know, God was still there. I think that, in
some ways, what we need to see (and what John needed to see) in the disarray of the church
is that just maybe a few decades at the most had passed by and the church was already in
chaos, and John needed to take a look and see was, in fact, Christ still in the midst
of His church? That's exactly what he sees. And then, as this very simple vision unfolds
-- simple for us to understand and yet profound in the reality of it -- there are just some
things that I want to point out to you. Don't take the outline too seriously. It's probably
a poor label for the bottle but look what's inside. It's amazing. First we see holy presence, verse 13: "in
the middle of the lampstands one like a son of man." And here is this magnificent term
'son of man' which is coming from the book of Daniel, as you know. It is a Messianic
term. It identifies God as man. It identifies God in human flesh, the incarnation. Daniel
7:13 talks about the Messiah "One like a son of man" who is "given dominion, glory, and
a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him." And
then it says His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and never to be destroyed. And, here,
we see Christ in His kingdom, moving in His church. It is His church. The Father gave
it to Him as a love gift. The church is the bride of the Son of God, and it was purchased
with His own blood. I love that passage in John 6 where Jesus says, "All that the Father
gives to me shall come to me and I have lost none of them but will raise them up at the
last day." John turns and he sees Christ in His church, holy presence in the church. He
is there. The Lord of the church has unceasing communion with His church. It's never broken.
The true church is in living communion with Christ. We used to hear a phrase a lot that
always bothered me, even as a young Christian. We used to hear people say, "You're out of
fellowship with the Lord." And there was something about that that just ground on me. I didn't
like that phrase because I understood koinonia to mean 'partnership' or 'communion' and my
communion, my partnership, my fellowship with the Lord is not subject to reversal. It's
not subject to change. It can't be altered. It's eternal. You may lose the joy of your
salvation but you will never be out of fellowship with the living Christ, no matter how difficult
the church may be in terms of its failures. No matter how weak, no matter how vacillating,
no matter how sinful, God's true people maintain an eternal and permanent relationship, and
the life of God is in them forever. That's why, in Matthew 28:20, Jesus said, "Lo, I
am with you always"; Matthew 18:20 -- "there am I in the midst of you"; John 14:18 -- "I
will not leave you. I will come to you"; John 14:23 -- "if anyone loves me, I'll make my
abode with him" (as you heard Sinclair speak of, in the earlier hour); Hebrews 13:5 -- "I
will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you." No matter how the church struggles,
the living Lord is alive in His church. He is alive among His mathetes aletheis, his
real disciples. The fellowship never stops. It is unbreakable. It is eternal. And the
One who chose us, the One who justified us, is sanctifying us and will one day what? -- glorify
us. He is alive in His church. I am comforted by that. There is holy communion as He moves
in His church. Secondly, I want you to notice holy intercession.
He is clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden
belt, or a golden sash. The robe, here, is an interesting word potereis. It appears a
number of times in the Old Testament in the Septuagint version. And it could be used to
refer to a 'king.' It could be used to refer to a 'prophet.' We know that kings wore robes
and prophets wore robes but, six out of seven times in which the Septuagint uses this word
in the Old Testament, it refers to the 'high priest.' Now, you might say, "Well, it's arbitrary
to make it indicate priestly work here," except for the fact that it adds that across His
chest was a golden belt. And if you were to go back to Exodus 28, 29, 39, back to Leviticus
chapter 16, around verses 4 and 5, you would see that part of the garment for the high
priest was a golden 'sash' or a golden 'belt,' worn across the chest of the high priest over
his robe. Here is the great high priest of the church. He is in His church. He is communing
with His church. He is in the middle or the midst of His church. He is interceding for
His church as their great high priest. And I know we love those passages in Hebrews 2:17
-- He is "a merciful and faithful high priest," able to come to the aid of those who are tempted;
Hebrews 3:16 -- "Jesus, the high priest of our confession," faithful over His house,
whose house we are; a wonderful passage in Hebrews 4:15 -- a high priest who can sympathize
with our weakness. He was in all points tempted like as we are, and yet without sin. He is,
it says later in Hebrews, "holy, harmless and undefiled." He is our great high priest.
No matter how Christians struggle, He will bring all His sons to glory. There will never
be a temptation that has taken us but such as is common to man. In that temptation, He
will always make a way of escape that we may be able to bear it. We indict the church,
yes. We address its weaknesses, yes. We decry its sins, yes. We mourn its errors, yes. But,
in heaven, no accusation ever stands against the church. Never. For should it ever stand,
Romans 8:31-39 would be rendered untrue and that cannot be. For God, who cannot lie, has
said nothing can ever alter our eternal relationship with Him. You may lose your eternal reward
-- 2 John 8 says 'look to yourselves, that you lose not the things that you have wrought
but that you receive a full reward.' You may lose some of that reward. There may be a diminishing
of that crown, but you will never, ever be separated from God. And, someday, Jesus Christ,
through His constant intercession and through ultimate glorification, will make you like
Himself. That, to me, is the most incredible reality of the Christian experience: that,
someday, we will be like Him. You know, whenever I get discouraged about my church, I remind
myself of that; that, someday, they'll all be like Christ. And I'm confident there will
be some of them that I will not recognize. But what I'm really frightened about is that
they may not recognize me! Along the way, constantly, unendingly, the great high priest
intercedes for His church. And then there is holy purification. In verse
14. Obviously, there is much more to say about this. That is what your pastor always says
when he has just run out of material, but we'll just go on. Verse 14: "and His head
and His hair were white like wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. And
His feet were like burnished bronze." John is seeing, here, beyond the clothing. In verse
13 you had the clothing. You had the belt and you had the robe but, here, you get beyond
the clothing and now we see the face. And we see the head and the hair. And we see the
eyes. And we even see the feet. And, when it tells us in verse 14 that His head and
His hair were white like white wool, like snow, this also takes us back to Daniel 7:9,
where the very same words are used to describe Almighty God on His throne. This indicates
to us that Jesus is, in fact, Holy God. He is the purest standard of right. And white,
by the way, as a word in the Greek, is not 'white' like the 'flat white' that you might
see on the painted wall. It's the word lukon, and it actually means 'dazzling.' It means
'blazing' or 'brilliant.' It's the white of 'light,' not the white of a wall. Here is
the dazzling, blazing, holy character of God manifest in the face of Jesus. And out of
that divine purity come eyes like a flame of fire, like lasers. Two penetrating streams
come. They are like the flaming torches of Daniel 10:6, and this is penetrating, holy
omniscience. This is divine knowledge. What the Lord sees, He sees penetratingly. He sees
to its infinite depth. There are no secrets. "There is no creature hidden from His sight,"
Hebrews 4:13 says, "but all things are laid bare to His eyes." And, though He intercedes
for His church, and nothing will ever cause them to be condemned, that does not mean that
He is not concerned about their holiness. And though they enjoy a present and continuing
fellowship with Christ, and though they enjoy a present intercession which secures their
salvation forever, they will also be subject to a present discipline. In fact, whom the
Lord loves He -- what? -- he chastens, and every son he scourges for the purpose of righteousness.
He wants His bride to be a chaste virgin, it says in 2 Corinthians 11. He wants His
wife to be without spot, holy blameless, no wrinkle, no blemish, it says in Ephesians
5. He wants His church above reproach -- Colossians 1. In fact, when you get into Matthew 18 and
the passage on discipline, verses 15 and following, you know somebody in sin, you go to that person.
If they don't repent, you take a couple of people with you and go back. If they don't
repent, you tell the whole church, send the whole church after them. If they still don't
repent, put them out. And when you do this, as hard as it is, the Lord is in the midst
doing it. That is where is says "where two or three are gathered together in My Name,
there am I in the midst" and, folks, that's not talking about a prayer meeting. It doesn't
take three people to have a prayer meeting. That's talking about discipline; two or three
witnesses. When you're involved in confronting sin in the church, the Lord is there because
He wants His church pure. He's in the midst. And He so much wants that that there are times
in your church when people will die because the Lord will take their life. This is the
sin unto -- what? -- unto death. And some among the Corinthians were asleep because
of it. And 1 John 5 says there's no sense in praying for this because this is, as far
as God is concerned, the straw that broke the camel's back. And for the person who died,
there is eternal glory. They're not ultimately punished. Remember, the ultimate punishment
was taken by Christ, but the church is spared their evil influence. In fact, Peter said
in 1 Peter 4:17, judgement must begin -- where? -- at the house of God. In John 15:2, the
Scripture says, "Every branch He purges." The picture gets a little frightening in verse
15. His feet are pictured here and they are like burnished bronze, red-hot, glowing brass.
He's moving through His church, not with fuzzy wool slippers. He's moving through His church
with flaming, burning, bronze feet. The imagery of feet -- obviously, for a monarch, the typical
scenario was they were elevated, right? And everybody came in below them. And this is
the picture of authority. This is the picture of fear, really, because they had the power
to crush, the power to wound, the power to injure. The Lord is moving through His church;
His holy presence, indicated by the white, penetrating gaze, seeing everything that is
there, finding the sin, and bringing His burning feet in judgement on that sin. You know, you
say when you discipline in the church do you get everything? No, I don't get everything.
We don't get everything. We work hard to keep the church pure. But I know One who does get
everything: the Lord of the church. That's comforting, because I want the church pure.
I want my own life pure. And the Lord brings things into all of our lives, doesn't He,
to effect that? Well, hurrying, number four is holy authority,
verse 15. As we look back at the scene, this burnished bronze that's as if it had just
come out of a hot furnace is followed by a voice that's like the sound of many waters.
John would've heard that a lot on Patmos. The rock goes right down to the water. There's
no beach there that I saw, and I got to the top and looked around the whole thing. I couldn't
find a beach. It's just rock to water. And, when the storms come, it slaps the rock and
perhaps John was very used to hearing the crashing waves smashing against those rocks.
It's, by the way, the same as the voice of God in Ezekiel 43:2. And what is this? What
is this? This is holy authority in the church. We, in the church, enjoy His holy communion,
His holy intercession, His holy purification and His holy authority. His Word thunders.
At the transfiguration, God said, "This is my belovèd Son." Do you remember the next
line? "Listen to Him." Listen to Him. He speaks in His church. The voice of holy authority
thunders in the church through the Scripture. The church, then, is the pillar and ground
of the truth. As we heard, again, from that magnificent passage in John's gospel -- the
upper room discourse -- Jesus says if you love Him, you hear His word, and you obey
it. His sheep hear his voice. They love it, and they do what He commands. "If you continue
in my Word," Jesus said, "you're my real disciple." The Lord speaks to His church through His
Word. Holy authority is exercised on the church. Obviously, it's a tragedy when people abandon
the Word of God for anything else, but the Lord manages to get His message to His people. And then there is holy sovereignty here. In
verse 16: "In His right hand He held seven stars." What is that? Down into verse 20 quickly,
the seven stars are the angelos of the seven churches. There is some discussion on this
by commentators. I don't think it can be angels. Why would Christ send a message through John
to angels back to the church? Furthermore, nowhere are angels ever given responsibility
in church leadership in the New Testament. They are servants, according to Hebrews 1:14.
It is best to see them as messengers. 'Messengers' is a good word and the word angelos is translated
'messengers' -- Luke 7:24, Luke 9:52, James 2:25. And they are messengers, I believe,
because they're going back to the seven churches with the letters. They are probably pastoral
representatives from those seven churches, and they have come to receive these letters
and they take them back. As the seven went back, one of them would end his journey at
Ephesus, and the next would end his journey at Pergamus, and the next would end his journey
at Thyatira, and they would drop off. And perhaps there were seven complete manuscripts
of the whole book of Revelation, but for certain, they took the specific letters to the churches.
These are the messengers referred to in the letters in chapters 2 and 3. And it says He
held them in His right hand and what I see here is that the Lord has His pastors, He
has His shepherds. With all those churches that had problems, there probably was some
pastoral conflict. If they had more than one elder in those churches, there may've been
some serious problems. But here were seven men that that Lord had in His hand. And I
know we get discouraged about what goes on among pastors. I know we get discouraged in
the church when men are unfaithful, when their lives aren't right, when they're not examples
of godliness and holiness, when they don't teach and preach the word, when they don't
provide shepherding and leadership for the church. We look at the confusion in the church
and we say it's a problem of leadership, but at the same time, know this: the Lord has
His true shepherds. And He has them in His hands; because Ephesians tells us He gave
to the church some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and teaching pastors. And
there're always going to be, in every generation, those faithful shepherds that He uses to edify
His church. They're always going to be there. The Lord will never leave His church without
shepherds. True shepherds, faithful, trustworthy shepherds. Sovereign control over the church,
purity in the church, truth to the church, intercession for the church, fellowship with
the church -- that's what the Lord is doing in His church. And then, number six, there's holy protection
for the church. I worry about my people. I worry about -- I mean I think one of the things
I worry about most with is that they would watch TBN! You know what I mean? I mean I
just worry that they're going to get exposed to aberrations and I, you know, you worry
about cults and occults and '-isms' and schisms and spasms and yogis and all the rest of the
stuff that comes down the pike. You worry about that and, you know, you watch, you warn.
I know that, after my departure, you know what's going to happen is of your own selves
perverse men are going to rise up and lead you astray and, from the outside, grievous
wolves are going to come in and chew you up. And it's true! It happens! It happens and,
you know, we have to watch and we have to warn. Well, be encouraged. This encourages
me: out of the mouth of the Lord (in the vision, verse 16) "came a sharp two-edged sword."
And what is this two-edged sword for? Well, over in verse 12 of chapter 2, He is identified
again to the church at Pergamum or 'Pergamus' as "the One who has the sharp two-edged sword."
And then He goes on in that letter, particularly to Pergamum, to refer to the teaching of Balaam
(false teachers, verse 14), more false teachers, called the Nicolaitans, in verse 15 and, in
verse 16: "I am coming to you quickly and I will make war against them with the sword
of my mouth." That is the sword that goes after the false teachers. It's the sword that
goes after the false teachers. False teachers, deceivers, fakes, frauds, the kapelos of 2
Corinthians; the kapelos, the hucksters, the conmen who assault the church, who bring in
their heresies, and we're reminded that the Lord is there with the sword. And it's the
sword that fights them and defends His own. Listen, the true children of God, the true
believers in Christ will not defect. 1 John 2:19 says, "they went out from us because
they were not of us. If they had been of us they would have continued with us, but they
went out from us that it might be made manifest they were not of us." You can worry, and you
can watch, and you can warn, and you can be the protective shepherd but, in the end, know
this: none of them will be lost to that deception. They say, "Well then, why bother to watch?"
Because you don't want them even confused, doubting, crippled by it. Why should they
lose their joy and their usefulness? When He gave faith to you to be saved, it was a
permanent gift. And you are no more the designer and the manufacturer of your sustaining faith
than you were your saving faith. That was reformed! Right!? It's also true! Well, I'm
running out of time so let me skip to the last point here. Verse 16, the end of the verse -- one more
part of this vision of Christ: "His face was like the sun shining in its strength." Here's
the glorious culmination, really. In the church, and through the church, the Lord gives holy
testimony. The whole face of the Son on Man is blazing. His face is like the sun shining
in its strength. What John means to say is 'His face is like the blazing sun in an unclouded
sky at high noon.' What he sees is shekinah, right? What he sees is the blazing face of
the Son of Man. What is this? This is the blazing, holy glory of God shining in the
face of Jesus Christ, out from the church. I love 2 Corinthians 4:6 -- "He shines in
us to give others the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Christ."
This is holy testimony. You know what Jesus is doing in His church? He's making the gospel
believable by shining through believers. He's making the gospel attractive by shining through
our transformed lives. As we let our light so shine, men will see our good works and
do what? Glorify our Father who's in heaven. I love that. We are, as it were, the reflectors
of the glory of God that shines in the face of Jesus Christ through us. Well, there you
see what John saw. At least a little bottle of it. All that concerns us far more concerns
the Lord of the church. All that we would want the church to be, and John would want
the church to be, He is making it to be. He is empowering it by His holy presence. He
is interceding. He is purging. He is teaching and commanding. He is sovereignly controlling
its leadership. He is using it as the instrument by which the shining glory of Jesus Christ
shines to a dark world. Do you see it? As comforting as this is to us, it was terrifying
to John -- as it was to Isaiah, as it was to Ezekiel, as it was to John, on another
occasion, with his two friends James and Peter. And, in verse 17, we have his first reaction:
fear. "And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as a dead man." R.C. Sproul has become legendary
for understanding the trauma of holiness and articulating it for us. And this is it. Why
did he fall over like a dead man? Well, the same reason Peter, when he caught all the
fish that day, said, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I'm a sinful man." He was terrified to
realize he was in the presence of Holy God! If he could see the Holy Christ, then the
Holy Christ could see him. He saw glory; Christ saw sin. And he was terrified; like Manoah,
like Job, like Ezekiel, like Isaiah, like Daniel, like Peter, like Paul on the Damascus
road. He was terrified into some temporary trauma. You know, I keep thinking about all
these people who say Christ shows up at their meetings and makes everybody laugh. He didn't
laugh. But it went from fear to assurance: verse 17 -- "He laid His right hand upon me."
I wonder if it was a familiar touch? After all, do you remember that John loved, in particular,
to be close to Jesus. Do you remember that? He would rather call himself 'the one who
leaned on Jesus' chest' than John. Or he would love to call himself 'the disciple whom Jesus
loved.' He loved to be near Him. I wonder if there was some familiarity in the touch.
"He laid His right hand on me and said, 'Stop being afraid.'" Stop being afraid. But, but,
but, but, but, but, but my sin, my sin, my sin! But "I am the first and the last and
the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys
of death and of Hades." What's all that about? You don't have to worry about this. I was
here before you and I am eternal. I am outside of history. I am above and beyond you. Furthermore,
I died for you and I rose for you. You're covered. And the keys don't hang on Satan's
belt. I've got them and they hang on mine. And you have nothing to fear. And then he
says (verse 19): "Write, get up, rub your eyes, dust yourself off, pick up your stylus
or your quill and do what I told you!" It all began that way back in verse 11: "Write."
But, instead, he's in a heap on the ground. And the Lord says, "Get up! Dust off and go
to work!" I love it. When you see the glory of Christ, it's a traumatizing reality and
I think it's a necessary thing. You will never deal honestly with your sins until you have
seen a vision of the holiness of God and Christ. It is a traumatizing reality, but we live
with the assurance that the One who is so frightening is the One who has paid the price,
in full, for our sins and whose holy justice has been satisfied. And, amazingly, He still
can use us. So, beloved, the Lord is alive in His church. Amen? He's moving in His church.
He's making His church what He wants His church to be and He's asked that you just get up,
dust off, know that He's dealt with your sins, and get busy doing exactly what He's commanded
us to do. And that is: spread the Word. And that's why we can affirm the words of Paul
in 2 Corinthians 2:14 -- "He always causes us to triumph." Our Father, we thank You for a glimpse, and
a brief one at that (and yet such a rich one), of the Lord of the church, our Holy Christ,
and for His ministry to us all and to His beloved, redeemed church. We thank You that
You have called us into the church. We are the church. It is with us He fellowships.
It is for us He unceasingly intercedes. It is us He purifies. It is to us He speaks through
His Word with authority. It is us that He protects. It is us that become, really, the
reflection, the mirrors of His glory. This is mystery; that such unworthy souls could
be called to such glorious privilege. And may we always be stunned by this calling to
represent the Holy Christ, of whom we are not worthy but in whom we shall eternally
rejoice. We pray in His great name. Amen.
