“The Ruler of the Kings of the Earth”

Revelation 1:4-8

Today begins a brief series of sermons from the Revelation. Revelation – not Revelations – is a letter written by an elder named John to First Century churches in Asia Minor. The text tells us there are seven such churches. Truth is we don’t really know how many of them there were. Seven is a symbolic number used often in Revelation to represent completeness. In other words, John is addressing his letter to every church in Asia Minor.

And while we’re on the topic of the number seven, the term seven spirits used in verse 4 is another reference to completeness, in this case the completeness of the Holy Spirit.

Who was this elder named John? Tradition has it that he was none other than Saint John the Apostle, that disciple most loved by Jesus. But nowhere in the book does this particular writer refer to himself as that John. Most modern scholars believe that John was an early elder of the church who had been a sort of circuit riding pastor of the churches in Asia Minor. He wrote the letter from exile on the island of Patmos. He had been exiled for the crime of being a Christian.

The churches he addressed were undergoing a period of severe persecution at the direction of the Roman emperor. For all its mysterious symbolism and strange beasts the letter is essentially one of encouragement to those Christians. It can be said that the motto of Revelation is, “Jesus will come again.” Billy Graham voiced this motto in stronger language as he summed up the message of Revelation. According to Dr. Graham that message is, “Jesus wins.”

This was and is good news to every Christian of every time and place, especially those who first heard the John’s letter read. Conversely it was and is bad news for every person, institution, and government that is an enemy of Christ. At times it has even been bad news for the church itself, especially when the church as an institution has joined with culture in opposing Christ.

In his book Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination Eugene Peterson has referred to John as a pastor, poet, and prophet. He was a pastor writing to encourage his scattered and distressed flock. He was a poet who used imaginative language to restate the entire message of Scripture. There is at least one reference from every book in the Bible contained in Revelation. John wasn’t writing anything new; he was simply summing up what was already out there. He was a prophet who looked to a better future, a future insured by the Word of God. Like the classic Old Testament prophets he wasn’t gazing into a crystal ball in order to predict future events. He was simply saying what God wanted to be said. And he was saying it primarily to his own generation of Christians.

And what was he saying? Jesus is coming again. He will be victorious over all that is evil. God’s will is going to be worked out in God’s own time and in God’s own way. God, the great “I am” of Exodus 3, is the God who was and is and will be. He is the Alpha and Omega. All things, including history, will be completed in him. He, the Alpha of creation, will be the Omega of creation’s redemption. God has been, is, and always will be in control. The ultimate grace and peace of the universe will be the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Jesus the Son, often referred to in Revelation as the Lamb, is our Savior. By dying on the cross – by shedding his blood – he revealed in one act in one time and one place the eternal love of God. By his blood we have been set free from sin and made into, using the words of I Peter 2, into a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s own people.

Jesus is the faithful witness, the One whose message we can always trust, and firstborn of the dead, the first to die and be raised again. A couple of facts: the word translated as witness is also translated as martyr. To be a witness for Jesus is to implicitly accept the possibility of martyrdom. The title “firstborn of the dead” reinforces the possibility of martyrdom for those who were and are being persecuted.

Jesus is given a third title in this morning’s text: the ruler of the kings of the earth. And his rule is complete. His is the Alpha and Omega of kingdoms, because his is the Kingdom of God. Wrote Fred D. Howard, “Unlike the Roman emperor’s limitations of both life and power, God is eternal and has all power.”

Earlier I described the message of Revelation as bad news for the enemies of Christ. The message of Revelation is the same as that of the Gospel itself. N. T. Wright approached this reality thusly: “… those whose way of life seems threatened by the gospel will always interpret it as bad news. Authorities regularly try to suppress or marginalize the gospel, rightly interpreting it as a challenge to their precarious position. But [its resurrection message] is not another human scheme, one power-play alongside others… It does, of course, challenge rulers who suppose themselves to be utterly supreme, answerable to nobody but themselves. This is the constant message of Revelation: Jesus is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth. One day his kingship will be universally acknowledged; for the moment the resurrection has inaugurated him as king-in-waiting, already enthroned but yet to establish his rule visibly and publicly.”

History is full of earthly rulers who thought of themselves as utterly supreme and answerable to no one but themselves. The rulers of the Roman Empire never dreamed that their empire would be destroyed. Napoleon thought he had established something of longstanding. Hitler’s Third Reich was supposed to last 1,000 years. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all believed that the so-called worker paradises that were their empires would eventually rule the world. All of them died. All of their empires were ripped apart. Their supposedly eternal kingdoms weren’t very eternal at all.

Each of them was in his own way an enemy of Christ. Some tried to wipe out the church. Some tried to co-opt it for their own purposes. All failed. Why? Because none of them heeded the message of Revelation: Eventually Jesus always wins. Some day Jesus will ultimately win. He truly will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is indeed Lord. Verse 7 of today’s text will be acted out at the close of history: “Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.”

So it is to be. This is a promise on which we can depend. We can trust God’s Kingdom to ultimately prevail. We can believe that God will do what he says he will do. We can believe that Jesus the Suffering Servant Messiah will one day be exalted and that his will be the name that is above all names.

But in the meantime, what? What are we to do? How are we to live? We are to do what our Lord has commanded us to do: proclaim the Gospel, make disciples, and minister to those in need. We are to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and dress the naked. We are to worship, pray, study Scripture, and join in Christian fellowship. We are to love and serve one another within the Body of Christ. We are to keep the Ten Commandments and seek to live our lives in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount. We are to live in this world as a counterpoint to culture: as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. Always remembering these paraphrased words of Tony Campolo: “If you just talk about [faithfulness], you don’t get put on the cross; you get invited to speak at the Rotary Club.”

For those Christians to whom Revelation was first addressed the options were very clear: Christ or Caesar. Choosing Christ could and often did mean a cross. Choosing Caesar meant being socially accepted, invited so to speak to the Rotary Club. The price to be paid, however, was – and still is – high: one’s very soul.

As modern American Christians the lines between Christ and culture aren’t so clearly drawn. We’re not being persecuted. We’re free to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Caesar is not insanely or homicidally jealous of God.

But every culture, even our American culture, is often at odds with God. Living in ways that are approved by culture can lead us to disobey God’s will. Sometimes we can’t be popular and faithful at the same time. Sometimes following Jesus will put us in some sort of non-acceptance by culture, in other words we will find ourselves on the outside looking in. It’s not so much a matter of persecution as it is rejection, dismissal, and marginalization, not necessarily dangerous but often quite uncomfortable.

So how do we deal with the discomfort? We remember the message of Revelation: Jesus wins. Amen.