Infinite – Revelation 1:1-20

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The word of God, testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. And blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

John to the seven churches in the province of Asia. Grace and peace to you. From him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priest to serve his God and father. To him be glory and power forever and ever.

Amen. Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him. Even those who have pierced him. And all peoples on earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be.

Amen. I am the alpha and the omega, says the Lord, 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 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, to 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. The hair on his head was 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 coming out of his mouth was 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 now look. I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and hades. Write, therefore, what you have seen and what is now and what will take place later.

The mystery of the seven stars that you saw at 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 the word of the Lord.

Thank you, Celia, for that grand reading. Morning, everybody. Morning. I wonder, if I was to ask you a question about heaven, what you'd answer. What do you imagine heaven to be like?

If I was to answer that question, I have to be honest, I would say it's like totley. Yeah. You see, Nikki and I returned here after 50 years of wandering around the country. After twelve years of me being a vicar in Wolverhampton, and I retired. And it feels, in many ways like we sort of come to the promised land, because we've got a house more wonderful than we could ever imagine.

We've got lovely neighbours, we've got places we can walk the dog. That's just fantastic without having to get in a car. Our grown up children and grandchildren just love coming to visit us and we've opportunity to enjoy new things. For me, that's things like getting to drive a minibus for t 17 and doing pilates. Oh, boy.

I'm a great fan of pilates. My back has never been better, my blood pressure's down, the doctor's fantastic. Yeah, things are really good. And what's more, we can be part of this lovely church. Life feels good and yet it's not as good as it could be.

Dark moments have cast their shadows across our bright, good life in these last few months. Within just a few weeks of us coming here, my mother, she was 96, but she died. And then a very dear lifelong friend who we were really looking forward to coming to Sheffield, spending time with him and his wife. He suddenly died unexpectedly. Nicky caught Covid in the new year and is struggling with lethargy and lack of energy.

And I think she's hoping to go to the GP this week, try and see if she can get on some long Covid help.

So, life is good, but it is fragile and it's not all as good as it could be. When life is good, it feels heavenly, but it can slip through our fingers and begin to crumble. When Nikki and I were in Wolverhampton, we had a big vicarage. It's crazy. We have the biggest house we've ever lived in without any children.

And so we opened it up from time to time to help people who were going through difficult times. And shortly before we came up here, the Ukraine war started. And long story, we can tell you about that some other time. But a mother and her two daughters came to stay with her, and when Russia invaded Mariupol. Their comfortable life was destroyed.

Their pain is heartbreaking, their resilience is fragile, and their future is very uncertain. What is going to happen?

See, for many people, life is far from heavenly, and as christians, we're not immune from difficulties and pains. In fact, the curious thing is, for many christians, holding on to faith brings them more pain rather than less. According to a House of Commons library paper at the start of 2024, across the world, one in seven christians, that's approximately 365 million people, one in seven christians are subject to high levels of persecution and discrimination because of their faith, and that has risen by 7% since 2000. 2021. Life can feel very much at odds with the promise Jesus made to his first disciples in the often glibly quoted verse from John chapter ten, when he said, I have come, that you may have life and have it to the full.

Does it feel like that? Pain and suffering can make us feel inadequate in our faith and we can start to doubt the goodness of God.

And that has always been true. That's not something special to our circumstances or the world today. Let me just give you a couple of examples in the Old Testament. Job, fascinating character, wonderful book, if you ever get the chance to read it. He was a wealthy man.

He was a great, wealthy man, and he had great faith to go with it. He had everything to go for him. But then his children were killed, he lost his wealth, he lost his health, and when he languished in pain, his wife said to him, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.

She could not see a reason to trust in a God who could allow suffering that she and her husband had to endure.

New Testament John the Baptist, that great prophet who was appointed by God to herald Jesus public ministry. It was the dawn of a new messianic age. But when the prophet was arrested because he'd upset King Herod's lover, he found himself not enjoying a golden age of glory, but he languished in a putrid prison, and he found himself asking himself, is Jesus the one who was to come?

Or should we expect somebody different? The great prophet was full of doubt because of his suffering.

And the life events experienced by job and John the Baptist are experienced by many in the early christian church. I don't know if you picked it up in the reading this morning how John described himself. Look at verse nine. I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and the kingdom, the patient endurance that are ours in Jesus. John, like so many of his fellow christian brothers and sisters, found life to be full of suffering and hard endurance.

Because of his faith in Jesus, because of his preaching and witnessing to Jesus, the Romans shipped him off to Patmos, a prison island for a life of solitude and hard labour.

At the time John wrote this book of Revelation, the Roman Empire had been in existence for 600 years, and it would remain with a vice grip on the world for another 400 years. It's one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen.

John lived a time when the might of this empire was against the church. Persecution was pushing it to the edge of oblivion.

You see, for people then, Rome, not heaven, was the mighty empire that people saw and experienced. The idea that there could be a greater kingdom would have sounded absolutely ridiculous. Who are you kidding? To the powerful and to those who wanted a quiet life, because they were under pressure from the rulers.

Anyone believing in stories of a greater kingdom, a kingdom of heaven, would have been at best, ridiculed and ostracised, at worst imprisoned and executed. So why did the story of the kingdom of heaven gain a foothold in the minds of these people who were so oppressed? Well, it was one mind blowing reason the king of the kingdom rose up from the dead. There is no stopping an opponent who, when you kill them, he comes back to life. What do you do?

To those fearful to hold on to their own fragile power, the king of the kingdom could be dismissed as a storytelling carpenter from a small, insignificant town in a troubled, dusty middle eastern country. But to those willing to listen to the testimony of his disciples and take it to heart and believe the evidence, the true identity of this storytelling Carpenter was as clear as if he stood before you. He was the king like no other. He was God.

He was the one who wants to come and encourage and strengthen his oppressed, struggling followers. And so he gave them a vivid revelation of who he is and of what he's really doing in their lives and where everything is heading so good. When you are going through something, you just think, where is this ever going to end? It just drains hope from you. But if you can see where you're going, it lifts the darkness.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

And what God offers, according to verse three of our reading, is a blessing, both to those who read it and to those who hear it and take it to heart, because the time is near.

What time might that be? Well, we get a clue in verse seven here. John blends together, as so many New Testament writers do. They take bits of different verses from the Old Testament and blend them together. And John uses words from Daniel, chapter seven and Zechariah, chapter twelve, to point to a glorious coming of Jesus in the clouds.

Now, at this point, let me offer you just a quick insight into the book of revelation, verses one and two of our reading. If you look at it, tell us it's a message that comes through a five link chain. It comes from the father who gave it to Jesus, who gave it to an angel, who gave it to John, who gave it to us. And the message in John's description of this God given vision are word pictures vividly painted in poetic, apocalyptic language. It shows us spiritual truths.

John, you see, is not narrating a newsreel.

He uses sensual Old Testament images to convey God's revelation of what was taking place in John's world, in their world. And the vivid imagery presented to us with the eventual outcome of everything shows us what's going to happen to all who oppose the kingdom of God. It shows what will happen to all who endure struggles and pains for the sake of following the king and being part of his kingdom and participating in the life of the church. The outcome will be both wonderful and terrible. It will be wonderful for the citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

It will be terrible for everybody who opposes the mighty king.

So going back to the picture of Jesus coming in the clouds, John is using Old Testament actual events and poetic descriptions to remind us of God's past interventions on behalf of his people. So, for example, do you recall when we were thinking about Exodus 14 and the people of Israel escaping from Pharaoh and Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea? And the army comes after them? What happens? God comes to them to rescue them in a cloud.

Psalm six. David prays for the God who rides the clouds to come and rescue his people. Describing Jesus returning in a cloud chariot is a powerful way of saying to the suffering church, God has intervened in the past. God can and God will intervene for you, whatever you're facing today.

What, though, of the timing?

Verse three says, the blessing God offers is to those who hear and take it to heart, because the time is near.

Really, 2000 years later, I still look in the clouds in Wolverhampton. I was walking the dog down the canal near where we used to live. There were these two people looking up at the sky. And I don't know, when somebody looks up what you do, you automatically look up, don't you? I can see it.

I can see. And I got to them, I said, what are you looking at? And they said, jesus.

Wow. And anyway, I looked, I couldn't see anything. The lady showed me her phone and in the clouds, the shape of the clouds, there was this face and bless them, they were convinced that they'd seen Jesus in the clouds. I think it's going to be more obvious than that. If you're like me, you look at the clouds when you're daydreaming and you begin to see all sorts of things, don't you?

When Jesus returns, it's going to be obvious to everybody. Everybody's going to see it and there's going to be no doubt about him coming.

And of course it might be 2000 years later, but let's not forget Peter tells us to God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

We're to be patient.

But of course, for John, Jesus did come quickly. For Jesus is there in his first vision. The blessing God offers his people is you see first and foremost a clear vision who he is and what he's doing. And then in the light of that vision, he offers his people calming reassurance of grace and peace. And that's a very reassuring combination.

To be presented to a king who is all powerful and mighty but have no grace and peace offered is a very disturbing thing to face. Where do I stand before this king? Is he a tyrant? Am I safe? That's not reassuring.

But neither is being offered peace and grace by a person who has no power to make it happen. That only goes to fuel resentment and opposition when you become disillusioned. God greets his church as a powerful, reassuring king, far greater than any emperor of Rome. Look at verses four, five and eight. He is the ever living, ever present almighty God.

He was before Rome and he will be after Rome. He is the beginning and end of everything. He has the power to make grace and peace a reality in the midst of suffering and pain. And God's power is magnified three times over. Each member of the Trinity plays their part in greeting and reassuring the church.

In verse four, the greeting of grace and peace from the ever present Father is echoed first by the seven spirits before the throne. That's John's symbolic way of saying, this is the Holy Spirit. Seven. The perfect number emphasises, this is the pure, godly Holy spirit who's in the throne room. And he by the spirit brings you into the presence of God.

And just as he brings you into the presence of God by his spirit, God and Jesus come into the lives of those who repent of their sin and put their trust in Jesus. He is God's deposit of the hope that's yet to be fulfilled for suffering followers. The spirit brings them, you see, spiritually into the throne room of heaven. It's what Paul describes in two corinthians, chapter four. Like this, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

That is a curious thing to say. How can you fix your eyes on something that is unseen? To Paul, there doesnt seem to be a problem. Hes talking spiritually. Our spiritual eyes can be fixed on what is unseen.

Since what is seen, the very thing that feels real and substantial, that is passing away, what is unseen, will last forever. God's world is upside down to our world. He turns our thinking upside down. He looks for faith.

And this blessing of grace and peace from the father is echoed a second time by Jesus Christ. He is the one who's the all conquering son.

Now, I don't know if this is a boy thing or perhaps girls like this, too. When my sons were youngsters, it seems a long time ago. I'm actually thinking about it. They still quite like to do this. They set themselves imaginary situations.

If you had a battle between a shark and a bear, who would win? If you had the battle between the hulk and Spider man, who would win? If you had a battle between a policeman and a teacher, who would win. And they just loved to sort of work out who would be the winner and how it would all come together. Let me tell you.

Jesus has been in the mother of all battles, for he has fought death and smashed it.

He is the firstborn from the dead, and he has overcome everybody's greatest enemy. You see, even the emperors of Rome were defeated by death. But Christ was victorious. And in his immeasurable power, he offers his people grace and peace.

From verse twelve onwards, John describes Jesus coming to him, his appearance, and he pictures Jesus as the figure in Daniel chapter seven, who was described as the ancient of days. He sees someone who is like. Now, he doesn't literally see Jesus looking like this. You can tell that because he keeps describing, he's like this, he's like that. He's like the other.

He's seeing something that is just completely mind blowing. He's seeing God and he's trying to put it into words, and how can he put it into words? But he, he culls images from the Bible where God is described in different ways and pulls together. He says, he's like this, he's like this, he's like that. So he says of Jesus, he's wearing a royal priestly garment going down to his feet.

He has feet like molten metal. And his voice is like water pounding over a cliff edge. I don't know if you've ever been by a big waterfall, but the sound of thundering water is awesome.

His eyes are like blazing fire. Because, you see, he can see the very desires of our hearts. He knows things about us that we try to hide.

And his tongue is like a double edged sword, that little roman sword that is almost like a tongue.

By his very words, he judges and saves and he wounds and he heals. And his face is like the brilliance of the sun. There was an eclipse the other day, wasn't there? And I guess there was lots of warning about, when you look at the sun, make sure you've got the right protective things for your eyes. Just imagine looking at somebody whose face is like looking at the sun.

It's just mind blowing. And this is the one, not the roman empire, who rules the kings of the earth. And he personally, as we've been thinking about earlier, as Ben's been reminded, he personally intercedes for us in the throne room of heaven, and he holds them firm in his right hand. Who on earth could possibly snatch any one of them from the right hand of this awesome being in fear? And who wouldn't be afraid, seeing that John falls face down?

But this is what happens next is just awesome. You see, Jesus of the Gospels is the hippie like character who wears sandals and parties and is so kind and gentle and caring for people, and yet he's crushed and killed. Here is God almighty. How is he going to react when he sees John? He does exactly the same thing.

Nicky is blown away by this.

This almighty being stoops down to lift John up, not to crush him, but to lift him up. He touches him. And this is just so amazing. This is the right hand that holds the church in safety.

God, because he is God, he is mighty, he is infinite in his ability, can at one and the same time, hold the whole church safe and secure in his right hand. And he can greet you as an individual with his right hand, as if you are the only person who matters.

So when you're suffering, just remember this incredible blend of might and power that is awesome beyond the wildest dreams of any person who comes to you to lift you up and give you grace and peace.

I wonder this morning, as you see this awesome, majestic, kind Jesus, does he grab your attention?

Remember what God says in hearing the reading from revelation. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the risen Lord Jesus has come to each of us to offer you the blessing of his undivided attention.

We need to welcome him and pay him attention every day of our lives, no matter what we face. For you see, he is the one and the only one who has overcome death. And he, John, describes it as holding the keys of death and hades. You see, it is him who determines the days of our lives and our destiny beyond the grave. When Nicky and I came to Sheffield, we had no idea that my mother was going to die.

We had no idea that Richard was going to die. Jesus did.

When loved ones die, it can feel the most inconvenient, painful thing you can possibly imagine.

But it's not a mistake.

Jesus holds the keys to death and hades.

How do you respond?

No one else, not even a mighty emperor of Rome, sentencing you to death for your faith actually has power over you. Because Jesus is the one who holds the keys to death in hades. Nothing you or I face is beyond Jesus reach and care support.

When we're faced with this immeasurable power and immeasurable grace, what will we do?

Some time ago, quite a long time ago, actually, in the 1950s, JB Phillips, you might have heard of him, he did a translation of the New Testament, which was quite popular in the fifties and sixties. He wrote a little book called your God is too small. And in it he speaks of how we can have religious lives and hold on to all the correct christian doctrines and have faith, but never actually encounter the living God. We can find ourselves holding on to comfortable little gods that we think is the true God, rather than having the courage to face the Jesus who comes to us as the all powerful God who once was dead but now is alive forever and ever. This morning, if you've encountered the risen Christ, join with me as I close in a prayer of praise.

It's written by an ancient ancestor of Jesus who was a great warrior, poet, king, King David. And it's a prayer about how God has saved him. And it's a very powerful prayer. It's a prayer that if you're ever in difficulty or you're in pain or you are just really in a difficult place, it's a prayer to pray, because it is a mighty prayer. We're going to pray that.

But of course, you might not feel ready. This might all be new to you and you might want to look into this further. So why not take up Ben's offer of this fantastic deal for three quid that's less than a pint of beer in this area, you can have something that is going to open your eyes up to this amazing God. And you see, bizarre as it may sound, what this lady does in this book is lots of things. But one of the things that struck me is she points out how easy it is.

And this sounds absolutely ridiculous, but this is what we find ourselves doing. We can set ourselves up as rivals to this mighty God. Rather than reflect his glory and serve him in perfect freedom. Knowing his peace and comfort and encouragement, we can find ourselves. But I want to be like that.

And that's the problem of where evil came into the world, because we wanted to be like God, instead of acknowledging the constraints God places upon us and letting us be the real people bearing God's image for his glory. Of course, if you've got any questions about this, do come and ask me or Ben or anybody else you know who loves Jesus. Let's pray.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.

My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge, my saviour from violent people, you save me. I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise and have been saved from my enemies. The waves of death squirrelled about me. The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

The cords of the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted me. In my distress, I called to the Lord. I called out to my God.

From his temple, he heard my voice. My cry came to his ears. The earth trembled and quaked. The foundations of the heavens shook. They trembled because he was angry.

Smoke rose from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth. Burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under his feet.

He mounted the cherubim and flew. He soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his canopy. Around him, the dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence, bolts of lightning blazed forth.

The Lord thundered from heaven. The voice of the most high resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy with great bolts of lightning. He routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed.

The foundations of the earth were laid bare at the rebuke of the Lord, at the blast of the breath from his nostrils, he reached down from on high and took hold of me.

He drew me out of deep waters.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me. He confronted me on the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into the spacious place. He rescued me because he delights in me.

We praise you, Lord Jesus. You are this almighty, awesome, powerful, gracious, loving, conquering God. And you come to see save us today for glory with you forever and ever. So we pray that you would strengthen us today for whatever we face. And we know we can trust you to see us through, for you have overcome.

Amen.