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References: Revelation 1:4
All right, back to Revelation chapter one. As we’re working our way through Revelation chapter one, a verse at a time, gives us some time to think about these things that the Lord is giving to John to write in this book. I had two blessings this week. Well, I should say two other blessings. I’ve had lots of blessings this week.
So have you. One was that I read a book on Baptist history, which reminded me again of all of the history of the struggle for a pure church and for doctrine that we believe in and it did my heart well. The other was that I’ve been praying for three churches that I know of personally that are struggling. They’re going through some hard things, and not even in this state in other parts of the country.
I’ve been praying for them and for their pastors and the people in those churches. As I was doing that, the Lord just reminded me and in my own mind, took a walk down memory lane. Of course, one of our problems is when we pray, we start walking down memory lanes all the time.
Don’t we have to get back on track? But I got to thinking about how blessed I have been to be in church all of my life. Now, I was saved when I was 11 years old and I was in church, you know, before that a little bit, not regularly then until I was 16.
But I remember all that. As a matter of fact, I started counting and in about 50 years of being in church, I’ve been a member of 11 different churches. And everyone has been a blessing to me. I have enjoyed it, whether I was young or old, all of those churches.
And you think back on all God has done for you and the blessings of those times. Big churches, I grew up in a church of 10,000, ran 100 buses on Sunday morning, you know, back in the 60s. And yet small churches, a church of 25, 30 people up in St. Paul, Minnesota for three years while I was in seminary and the cold weather of St. Paul, loved them both. God’s people serving him, doing what he wants them to do.
Separated people, evangelistic people. When I was 16, my sister and I, when we could drive, we drove 40 miles one way just so we could be in a youth group in a church in Cincinnati. And grew up in that church, that’s what drew me into church.
And I loved it. I took the challenge of it as a high schooler, as a teenager to stand for the Lord finally, though I was saved at 11 years old, finally living for him when I was 16. And sorry I had wasted the other years, but God did a work in my heart. I remember godly older saints in all of those churches that brought maturity and leadership and godliness, fathers who had known him from the beginning, as John called them. I remember sacrificial families giving time and taking kids here and there and doing things in the church and filling the nursery in the Sunday school classes and those kinds of things. Dedicated teens in those churches just to see teenagers come out of the world these days and choose to serve God has always been a blessing to my heart. And then all the little kids that run around in church and they’re trying to grow up and figure out what to do and what they’re supposed to do and not do in church.
All of those things to me are a blessing. And in all of that, whatever church I’ve been in, there’s been a certain peacefulness, a certain tranquility to being among God’s people, to fellowshiping together in that safe environment. You could bring your kids in there or your grandkids as it is and know that they were safe and know that they were okay in being taught the things of the Lord. There’s always been a certain purpose in our kinds of churches, a purpose to get the gospel out, a purpose to be a witness for Christ, to give sacrificially that the gospel can go around the world. And all of those things and a solid confidence in the doctrinal beliefs that we hold, in the scripture and in the doctrines of the Lord Jesus Christ, His first and second coming, all of those things, what a blessing it is. And I don’t know about you, but I look forward to it. I love just being in the hallways and being in the auditorium like we are now.
It has been a blessing. Now, as John gets ready to write to churches, he’s going to write to these seven churches that we have listed in chapters two and three. And you know what, they’re not unlike our churches today. You read these descriptions of them, there’s problems in some of those churches, he has to scold them for certain things, but then there is that purpose and peacefulness too in many of those churches, open doors that God opens for them to have a ministry and do things. But in this first chapter and in these verses that we’ve been reading last week, this week, and a little bit next week, he is describing God.
He’s describing the triunity of God, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he lays this out folks as the foundation. This is the cornerstone. This is what all of our worship and all of our fellowship and all of our activity has to be anchored upon or we’re not going to have ministry. ministry. This is our foundation.
This is the beginning and ending point. And so as he’s preparing to write to these churches, he makes some certain points here. Now last week in verse four, we picked up on the fact that he begins by talking about grace and peace.
You see that? And so he’s going to say to the churches, I want to send grace and peace. And in doing that, he delineates the Godhead, God the Father, and then he chooses to do the Holy Spirit second, and then God the Son third, because God the Son is going to be really the central figure of course in this first chapter of Revelation. So grace and peace, he’s saying to the churches to have the kind of grace and peace that we have known in our churches. It must come from God the Father who is, who was, and is to come. Everything that he was, he is now.
And everything he is now, he always will be. We can rely on that. We don’t have to go back 500 years, as I did in the book this week, to find grace and peace in the churches.
And why not? Because God is, he was, and he always will be. And from the seven spirits, a unique description of the Holy Spirit of God, as we saw last week, who is before the throne of God, who represents us there, who translates our prayers, who helps us in our singing, helps us in the understanding of the scripture, the Holy Spirit is there to bring grace and peace to our church services as well. And then to Jesus Christ. And that’s what we have in our text today in verse 5, now mentioned third, though of course we know God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all equal, all God, all manifestations, persons if you will, of the Godhead. And so Jesus Christ is the faithful witness and he is a number of things. But I want you to notice before we come back and pick up those things that right in the middle of verse 5, he also then says unto him, now notice if you see, if you begin in verse 5, from him, from Jesus Christ, and then in the middle of the verse, and unto him, that is, unto Jesus Christ, if grace and peace come from Jesus Christ and the Father and the Spirit, then unto him, and no doubt under the Father and under the Holy Spirit, belong what? Well you have to go to the end of verse 6 to see his final statement, glory and dominion forever and ever. If you see, if grace and peace come to us through the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, then folks we owe unto God glory and dominion forever and ever. And I think if we forget either of these things, either of these bookends, where our grace and peace come from, and who deserves our praise and honor and worship and glory and dominion, then we will cease to worship as God wants us to worship.
We must remember these things. Now I just flipped back through my Bible a little bit today, thinking of glory, or excuse me, grace and peace. And do you know you can hardly go to one of the epistles in the New Testament? One of the letters, whether John writes it or especially Paul, without finding this introduction, to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Under the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours, grace be unto you and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Second Corinthians, the same thing. Galatians, under the churches of Galatia, grace be to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Go to the next book, Ephesians, grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Philippians, yes, grace and peace be unto you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians and 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians and every book, grace and peace be unto you.
You know what finally went through my thick head? Grace and peace is supposed to be in our churches, folks. As a matter of fact, grace and peace, no doubt, becomes the most common characteristic of the true churches of Jesus Christ. There must be grace and peace in these churches. And then I got to think, you know, here we are in the 21st century, in the day and age in which we live, and I think in our lives, in our country, and no doubt in this world, we are desperate for knowing real grace and real peace.
Isn’t that sad? I think in many ways grace has simply become a license to do what we want to do. We love the song Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound That Saved a Wretch Like Me, because we intend to go on being a wretch and think God is kind of like a big daddy that sits in the sky and just kind of forgets a lot of that and says, oh, go on, I love you anyway.
way. That’s grace to us many times today. And peace, I think, is a psychological manipulation drummed up by cheap doctrine. You know, we’ve kind of talked ourselves into how to manipulate this and think like this and do this and then we’ll have peace and everything will kind of be tranquility and yet we know nothing of the peace that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ and from the Spirit of God into our hearts. We’re in desperate need of knowing grace and peace. But not only that, I think we’re in desperate need of knowing how to ascribe glory and dominion to God.
Knowing how to praise God, how to truly worship Him. Now we know how to perform our own praises, I’m afraid. We know how to do the performing and then say, well now Lord, you sit here while we do the performing and you kind of clap for us.
As long as we have a stage, a platform and the rest we can perform on, we’re happy about it. I think that we’ve created God in our own image and we keep Him kind of under control so that His will and His wishes are exactly what we wanted in the first place anyway. And we’re in desperate times because of that folks. But John has a solution here or Jesus does through John. And that is that we must keep the Lord in His proper place before us so that we can have grace and we can have peace and we can properly ascribe to Him glory and dominion.
You know there’s a formula in the book of Numbers that the Israelites used often in Numbers 6. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and what? Be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Be gracious unto thee and give thee peace because grace and peace come from who?
From the Lord. Grace and peace does not come from within us folks. We’re at war with God usually and even after we’re redeemed the Lord has to work hard on us to change us into the image of His own Son. But grace and peace come from the Lord Himself. Now go back to our text as we work through chapter 5 and let’s think about those two things. We’re told in the third place if you will after verse 4 finishes that grace and peace also come from Jesus Christ.
Or if I said grace and peace mostly from Jesus Christ. I’m not setting one member of the Godhead up above another but he is set third here because for the rest of the chapter we’re going to center on that person of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is His mission to bring us grace right? If it had not been for God manifested in the flesh we would not know grace. It’s not for the Lord Jesus Christ who brought an enemy back to God would we have peace with God?
We saw that last week. And so grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ. A lot comes from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you remember in verse 1? The revelation of Jesus Christ. We wouldn’t be sitting here today with Bibles on our laps and reading the very word of God if it hadn’t come through Jesus Christ. There’s the testimony of Christ in verse 2. The testimony of Jesus Christ, John is holding that. Verse 9 hits not only the testimony of Jesus Christ but also of the word of God. And in verse 9 the patience of the Lord Jesus Christ. These things all come from Christ. But in verse 5 he says this, from Jesus Christ who is?
Now stop and think that passes all understanding that keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Where does it come from? It comes from Jesus Christ and how do we get it then? How does it come our way?
And John takes time to give us a biographical sketch of Jesus Christ. That’s where it comes from. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
So it must come from the Lord Jesus Christ. And too often we already, we have Jesus already figured out, right? We kind of learned about him in Sunday school.
We know A, B and C about him. And so we’ve said him here for the rest of our life like a little statue in our lives. And there Jesus is.
Of course we know him. But Paul in his latest letters in the New Testament after serving him for so many years said, oh that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. He still was not so satisfied with knowing about Christ. And so when John says to us, who is, we need to pay close attention. First of all, he is the faithful witness.
I appreciated Ray’s prayer this morning that highlighted these things for us and thank you for that. The faithful witness, God’s testimony in this world. The one who always did those things that pleased the Father, the one who finished the the redemption for sin and on the cross could say it is finished.
All that you need from God in grace is there in him. The faithful witness, you know that the word witness is martyr, Martus it is here in this verse. He is the faithful witness. Now every witness is in some sort of martyr. That is all of us who witness for the Lord Jesus Christ expect that we might get some reaction back. It doesn’t mean it will always end in death, but it means that there’s always some reaction back against us.
Why? Because if the world did not receive him, he’s not going to receive his witnesses. But he was the faithful witness in that he did everything God asked him to do even to the point of death. I want you to go to Philippians chapter 2 with me if you will. It’s a passage you should know about and so I ask you to turn there and since it’s a little bit long I don’t want to read it all to you, but Philippians chapter 2 we have a passage that we call the Canosus passage because there’s a word in this text.
The Greek word is Canosus and I’ll point it out that tells us a lot about Christ. Now in this second chapter of Philippians, Paul is going to say this, you need to think this way. In the end of verse 2 you need to be of one mind. In verse 3 you need to have lowliness of mind and in verse 4 you need to do it toward others. And so verse 5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now isn’t that what John’s doing for us? John is saying Jesus Christ who is these things? And here’s the apostle Paul saying you let this mind be in you.
Now notice who? Describing again Jesus Christ. Who being in the form of God, the morphae of God, equal to God. Thought it not robbery to be equal with God, meaning simply it wasn’t something he was going to grasp at all costs and say, well I’m not leaving heaven to go to earth. No, even though in all ways he is equal with God he still turned it loose. So in verse 7, but made himself of no reputation. That’s one word in Greek from the word canosis.
That’s why they call this the canosis passage. He made himself of no reputation. The God of all of heaven. The firstborn of every creature as we’re going to see in our text. The one who loved us, the one who has existed throughout eternity, he made himself of no reputation.
How shameful it is for Christians and especially for ministers of the gospel to seek reputation when the Lord Jesus Christ himself made himself of no reputation. Took upon him the form of a servant, the morphae of a servant and was made in likeness of men and being found in fashion. Schematum, the schematic it is being found in fashion as a man, meaning he was God and he was man. He was still fully God. When you looked on him, you saw a man.
If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t know he was also God. When he walked on this earth, he was in the schematic of a man, fashion as a man, but then notice what he says in verse 8, he humbled himself. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He is and was the faithful witness. He did exactly what God asked him to come here to do, the faithful servant and witness. But if glory and dominion belong to him, why is that verse 9, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father.
You know what? My doctor tells me I have osteoarthritis in my knee, but I think Christians too often have theoarthritis in our knees. We have a hard time bowing our knees to God himself and to the Lord Jesus Christ. When is the last time we got on our knees and praised his name for what he has done for us? And if we have theoarthritis, we must have theotonsolitis too because every tongue should be confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father. And how often does our tongue confess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Maybe we’ve got arthritis of the tongue and yet this is what we have to understand that Jesus Christ did these things, that Jesus Christ went before us. He’s the captain of our salvation, the high priest of our faith. Now back to our text in Revelation 1. He’s not only the faithful witness, he is also the first begotten of the dead. Ray said it right in his prayer when he said the first begotten in his resurrection from the dead. We can say that that he’s the first begotten of the dead, literally out of the dead, because he was the first one to be resurrected, the first and only one. Now that doesn’t mean people weren’t resuscitated when they died and God brought them back to life and then what happened to them later?
They died again. Poor Lazarus had to do it twice. Though it’s appointed unto man once to die, some get to be the exception to that rule. And he had to die twice, but Jesus Christ didn’t because he was resurrected. He was the first begotten of the dead.
Now this is an important word and I want us to dwell on it for just a few minutes. To be the first begotten, sometimes that’s translated first born as you recognize it in our scripture. And the word is prototikos, prototikos, and if you look up in English equivalent to that, it would be primogenitor. A primogenitor is the exclusive right of inheritance to the first born. The firstborn.
Webster will tell you the same thing. There is an exclusive right of inheritance to the oldest son. To the one, to that person belongs a certain preeminence. He’s the primogenitor, the prototikos. And so this word appears nine times in our New Testament.
It’s actually a pretty rare word. And when we read these nine times, we find this, that he is first in time, obviously a firstborn would be first in time. Jesus Christ, of course, was first in time. It means even more than that, first in importance, preeminence. And so the firstborn always has a certain preeminence.
That’s why I always thought that way about my older brother. You know, he had a certain preeminence, us third kids, we don’t. But Jesus Christ, of course, is high above all other things. And then he is first among peers, as we’ll see. And so as I looked at these nine instances of this word, and I’m going over these for the sake of one thing, that the cults always throw up in our face.
And I think it’s worth us noticing here. But first, three times, this means physical birth. In other words, first it is when Jesus was born, Mary brought forth her firstborn son. And so three times in the Scripture, this means simply someone who was born physically who was the first. Jesus was the first, Isaac was the firstborn, and so forth. Four times in the Scripture, it means first among resurrected brethren. It means that in here in our passage, for whom he did for an oh, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of a son that he might be the first born among many brethren. Now you and I will be resurrected one day, but Jesus Christ was resurrected first. He was the first fruits, right?
A kindred type of term. Or Colossians 1.18, he is the head of the body of the church who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. And so he is the first out of the grave, and Hebrews 12.23, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. When we get to heaven, we’ll be the church of the firstborn in heaven.
And to God the judge and the spirits of judgment made perfect. So we are the church of the firstborn, and yet he is the firstborn from the dead. Now there is one that always troubles people, and that’s Colossians 1.15, which says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. And there are always and have been those who say, well then Christ was the first thing created. And then after he was created, he created all things himself. And they always go back to verse 15 to point this out, the firstborn of every creature. Now first we ought to understand that every creature can also be stated all creation. He is the firstborn of all created.
And then listen to this, for by him, I’m still reading in Colossians 1. 16, for by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things and by him all things consist. Was he before anything was created in this world?
Of course he was. He’s eternal. Of course he was before all things. But does that mean he was created first?
No, not at all. There’s a dictionary I like to read and I have this in my office. It’s 10 volumes on every word in the New Testament. 10 volumes. And rather than reading a little statement about this long, when you read a definition of a word, for example on Prototikos, it has 12 pages of definitions from all the history and all the languages in the Old Testament and the New Testament, you know, and everything like that. And when it gets all done, the greatest thing it said is that Jesus Christ cannot create all things and at the same time himself be created.
Isn’t that right? How can someone say he created all things but he himself is also created? And what does Colossians say he is before all things and by him were all things made? And so to be the firstborn of all creation folks means that he has preeminence and he was there first because he is the everlasting God who was not created but is eternal, God in the flesh. And then the last one is that he has, when he was born into this world, he came in with supreme authority and preeminence, Hebrews 1 6, when he bringeth the first begotten into the world, he saith, let all the angels of God worship him. When Jesus was born, the angels of God worshiped him. And who is this first begotten that God brings into the world? Not the first one ever born by any means, but it means he is the eternal God, the one who has preeminence, the firstborn of the God.
head you might say. So folks when we read this make no mistake about it such terminology speaks to the deity the divinity the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ and he is the first begotten of the dead. He did come out of the grave first so that you and I can come out of the grave also.
Let me summarize that if I can. Jesus Christ the third person of the Godhead existing eternally with God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit was then the preeminent one who would come to this earth to redeem us from our sins. He created all things that exist in this world all the angels all of the creation time and space itself he made it and he was there before it and then he came into this creation as the firstborn from all eternity God placed him here in the very thing that he had made and then while here he became one of us and he became a brother like us that he might be the firstborn among many brethren and he died so that we might have victory over the grave and he became the first born out of the grave so that all of us can have grace from the Lord Jesus Christ and peace forever with him.
What a wonderful thing this is now thirdly I’ll move on. He is also the prince of the kings of the earth that is he is the Archon he is the highest he is the prince of the the archa if you will the highest arch if you will of the Godhead the of the all the kings of the earth Daniel 2.4 47 the king answered unto Daniel and said of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods and a Lord of lords and a revealer of secrets seeing thou could reveal this secret. Revelation 17 and verse 14 these shall make war with the Lamb that’s the Lord Jesus Christ of course and the Lamb shall overcome them for he is Lord of lords and King of kings and they that are with him are called and chosen and faithful and of course in chapter 19 verse 16 when he returns on a white horse from heaven he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written King of kings and Lord of lords. There’s a statement in Psalm 89 that goes like this he shall cry unto me thou art my father my God the rock of my salvation also I will make him my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth. So when we find in our text that he is the prince of the kings of the earth we know exactly what that means. If you will look back to your left just a couple pages to Hebrews chapter one it’ll appear just a few books back Hebrews chapter one let me remind you of something though somebody says well if Jesus is king and the king of kings and Lord of lords why do all the bad things happen and why does all the evil continue in this world look at Hebrews chapter two I’m sorry Hebrews chapter two and verse eight thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet Hebrews 2 8 for in that he put all in subjection under him he left nothing that is not put under him but now we see not yet all things put under him not yet it’s coming resurrection day isn’t here yet Jesus isn’t reigning yet but he will reign but we see Jesus verse 9 who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor and we give that to him today that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man for it became him that is it was right of him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons in the glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering aren’t you glad that he’s going to bring us into glory aren’t you glad that he is going to firstborn among many brethren that he is our older brother and it’s proper to be able to say that because he’s the firstborn of all brethren and he will bring us to glory that’s a great thing he is the prince of the kings of the earth now back to our text and let me quickly finish these last statements because not only grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ but glory and dominion belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and so we have that and we’ll finish it next week in verse 6 but unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood Galatians I was reading in the in this in this book of Galatians if I can find it and I don’t have it so I won’t read it let me go back to Galatians chapter 1 and I read you a few verses to begin with but in verse 3 it says grace be unto you in peace from God the Father from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father to him be glory forever and ever amen did Jesus Christ wash you from your sins if he did folks he delivered you from this present evil world or this present evil age he made you a child of God he made you different from this world he gave you the ability not to sin and live in this world in the muck and mire of its age but he’s delivered you from this from this present evil world and our text says why because he loved us. Romans chapter 5, a great chapter says this in verse 6, when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
I guess it’s just not popular in our day and age is it to talk about ourselves as such a worm as I? As the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet per adventure, for a good man someone even dare to die, but God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. What love is that? That is a God they love. Do you know that the world before they know Jesus Christ does not know a God they love? They may quote John 3 16 from here to the day they die, but if they don’t know Christ’s Savior they do not and cannot experience a God they love. And you know what a God they love is basically all giving love. Asking nothing of you in return.
You had nothing to offer God for your salvation. He loved you with an all-giving love. All human love is in some respect give and take.
There may be a lot of give but there’s something I want in return, something I expect in return. That is what human love is whether it’s family love, falling in love type of love or whatever friendships. But God gave us an all-giving love for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Not that we loved him but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. That is a God they love. He loved you and had he not loved you, you individually in such a way you would have no hope of grace or peace.
To him belongs glory and dominion. And not only that he washed you, right? He washed you from your sins. You remember Titus chapter 3, after the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy, that is his grace, he saved us. By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. You know that the human race needs washing folks.
It needs washing and you can’t just wash yourself up a little bit and wipe off your face a little bit. You know I used to take junior kids to camp. You ever take junior kids to camp? Spend a week in a dusty camp with junior boys who never opened their suitcase.
Whatever they came to camp in they leave in and you say go take a shower and they come back and there’s this kind of white wash look around their face like this as their dusty hair is pushed to the side. You know that’s what the world is like. We’re like a bunch of junior high kids thinking we’ve washed up before God and we haven’t. He needs to wash us and how is he going to wash us from our sins by the way. You know in Ephesians 1-5 that we are told that we were by nature the children of wrath. By our nature we’re children of the wrath of God. We deserve the wrath of God for our dirtiness and our filthiness and the sins that offend a holy God. But he washed us from our sins and how? In his own blood. In whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the God. Sometimes we’re far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
How does that happen? You know I guess that’s a hard thing for people to understand isn’t it? Because all kinds of theories have popped up in the last 2,000 years as to how we can be washed by the blood of Christ. Some believe that priests can take wine and buy a certain pronouncement turn it into the blood of Christ and if you drink it or he drinks it then you’ll be washed or something like that.
Or some people I don’t know come up with some type of a fountain of youth that if you take of it you’ll be cleansed. How is it that he washed us by his blood? Well if you want to read to me one of the the greatest descriptions it’s in that famous chapter Isaiah 53 where in that Old Testament prophecy we are given this suffering Messiah who died for us and I’ll read you a couple verses there Isaiah 53 10 it pleas the Lord to bruise him he has put him to grief but when thou shalt make his soul which he poured out on the cross and offering for sin he that is God will see his seed he’ll seek Jesus Christ in that and shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand he shall see the travail of his soul when by faith you come to the Lord Jesus Christ and say I need to be washed of my sins God sees the travail of the soul of Jesus Christ on the cross pouring out his blood for you he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied for by his knowledge shall the righteous servant justify many for he shall bear their iniquities you come to Jesus Christ by faith then God sees Jesus Christ and he sees the blood he shed not your righteousness not your blood you could give yourself as a martyr and shed all of your blood it wouldn’t go a second any turn life for you.
He sees His blood and He sees that soul poured out and He applies that righteousness to your sinfulness and makes you a child of God washed by His blood. I love that Revelation chapter 5 where John is weeping and John is weeping in Revelation 5 because he sees God on the throne who has the book of life if you will a seven sealed book who is going to reveal how to have eternal life and no one in heaven, no one on earth and no one under the earth is worthy to go and open that book and John cries in heaven and when he’s crying one of the elders said, weep not behold the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David hath prevailed that is he died for you to open the book to loose the seven seals thereof and I beheld and lo in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb as it had been slain, freshly slain for you and me. John sees that before the throne of God a lamb of God as it had been slain and so he came the lamb did and he took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.
I mean you approach God and you take something out of God’s hand I don’t care if you are Michael the archangel you will die on the spot and this lamb slain before the foundation of the world comes and takes the book out of his hand this of him that sat on the throne and when he had taken the book the four beasts and the four and twenty elders you might think are going to attack this person no they fall down before the lamb and every one of them had harps and golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints and they sung a new song and said, To the lamb now thou art worthy you are worthy too you must be God also you must be sinless and perfect and eternally holy you also can take this book out of the father’s hand you are worthy to take the book to open the seals for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation and has made us unto our God’s kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. Which is next week’s message in verse 6 praise the Lord for that.
I love that old song, Redeemed. You ever you know that song redeemed how I love to proclaim it redeemed you know if you redeem something my wife and I went to an antique store well she went and I went along but I find a few things too but you know what you redeem things out of antique stores you you salvage them you know you rescue them and wash them up and make them usable again you redeem them redeemed how I love to proclaim it redeemed by the blood of the lamb redeemed through his infinite what mercy his grace all giving love to us his child and forever. I am the peace of God that passes all understanding keeping our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What a wonderful blessing this is.
Now I want to ask you if you know him as your savior you ever come to him and said, I am a sinner lost and undone I need my sins to be under the blood of Christ. I need no longer to be seen as a sinner before God but rather as a redeemed. One as a brother of Christ if you’ve never received Jesus Christ as your savior, as we sing an invitation song you have an opportunity to come here meet me at the front let someone show you from the scripture how to receive Christ as your savior. That’s always our first and foremost invitation and then you may also as a child of God if you need kneel here at the front and pour your heart out to the Lord. Burn some bridges behind you put some things away that you know are displeasing to God and leave this building today walking anew in fresh fellowship with him. Or maybe you didn’t need some other need taking care of your life maybe you need to bow your head before you sing a word of a song and say, oh Lord you know what is holding me back forgive me of this whatever it is you do it before the Lord stand with me. If you will and let’s quickly bow our heads before we open our songbook today let’s let’s pray.
Father, now in our invitation time we invite you to speak to our hearts and Father if we have come before you in humbleness and contrite us today if we have opened your word with reverence. If we have spoken of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Godhead in the way that we should then Father our prayer is that your Spirit would work in our hearts that you would do your work that you desire to do, that you would move each and every one of us in the way that we need to be moved. Show us what is displeasing to you. and Father I pray that the Holy Spirit would be mighty and strong in pulling a sinner to Jesus Christ as Savior. And so Father do these things in our midst and honor your word we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
A familiar song is page 332 in our book just as I am we’re going to sing four verses of this if you have a need come as we sing meet me at the front you do what God wants you to do just as I am 332 let’s sing it together just as I am 332 let’s sing it togethe
So have you. One was that I read a book on Baptist history, which reminded me again of all of the history of the struggle for a pure church and for doctrine that we believe in and it did my heart well. The other was that I’ve been praying for three churches that I know of personally that are struggling. They’re going through some hard things, and not even in this state in other parts of the country.
I’ve been praying for them and for their pastors and the people in those churches. As I was doing that, the Lord just reminded me and in my own mind, took a walk down memory lane. Of course, one of our problems is when we pray, we start walking down memory lanes all the time.
Don’t we have to get back on track? But I got to thinking about how blessed I have been to be in church all of my life. Now, I was saved when I was 11 years old and I was in church, you know, before that a little bit, not regularly then until I was 16.
But I remember all that. As a matter of fact, I started counting and in about 50 years of being in church, I’ve been a member of 11 different churches. And everyone has been a blessing to me. I have enjoyed it, whether I was young or old, all of those churches.
And you think back on all God has done for you and the blessings of those times. Big churches, I grew up in a church of 10,000, ran 100 buses on Sunday morning, you know, back in the 60s. And yet small churches, a church of 25, 30 people up in St. Paul, Minnesota for three years while I was in seminary and the cold weather of St. Paul, loved them both. God’s people serving him, doing what he wants them to do.
Separated people, evangelistic people. When I was 16, my sister and I, when we could drive, we drove 40 miles one way just so we could be in a youth group in a church in Cincinnati. And grew up in that church, that’s what drew me into church.
And I loved it. I took the challenge of it as a high schooler, as a teenager to stand for the Lord finally, though I was saved at 11 years old, finally living for him when I was 16. And sorry I had wasted the other years, but God did a work in my heart. I remember godly older saints in all of those churches that brought maturity and leadership and godliness, fathers who had known him from the beginning, as John called them. I remember sacrificial families giving time and taking kids here and there and doing things in the church and filling the nursery in the Sunday school classes and those kinds of things. Dedicated teens in those churches just to see teenagers come out of the world these days and choose to serve God has always been a blessing to my heart. And then all the little kids that run around in church and they’re trying to grow up and figure out what to do and what they’re supposed to do and not do in church.
All of those things to me are a blessing. And in all of that, whatever church I’ve been in, there’s been a certain peacefulness, a certain tranquility to being among God’s people, to fellowshiping together in that safe environment. You could bring your kids in there or your grandkids as it is and know that they were safe and know that they were okay in being taught the things of the Lord. There’s always been a certain purpose in our kinds of churches, a purpose to get the gospel out, a purpose to be a witness for Christ, to give sacrificially that the gospel can go around the world. And all of those things and a solid confidence in the doctrinal beliefs that we hold, in the scripture and in the doctrines of the Lord Jesus Christ, His first and second coming, all of those things, what a blessing it is. And I don’t know about you, but I look forward to it. I love just being in the hallways and being in the auditorium like we are now.
It has been a blessing. Now, as John gets ready to write to churches, he’s going to write to these seven churches that we have listed in chapters two and three. And you know what, they’re not unlike our churches today. You read these descriptions of them, there’s problems in some of those churches, he has to scold them for certain things, but then there is that purpose and peacefulness too in many of those churches, open doors that God opens for them to have a ministry and do things. But in this first chapter and in these verses that we’ve been reading last week, this week, and a little bit next week, he is describing God.
He’s describing the triunity of God, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he lays this out folks as the foundation. This is the cornerstone. This is what all of our worship and all of our fellowship and all of our activity has to be anchored upon or we’re not going to have ministry. ministry. This is our foundation.
This is the beginning and ending point. And so as he’s preparing to write to these churches, he makes some certain points here. Now last week in verse four, we picked up on the fact that he begins by talking about grace and peace.
You see that? And so he’s going to say to the churches, I want to send grace and peace. And in doing that, he delineates the Godhead, God the Father, and then he chooses to do the Holy Spirit second, and then God the Son third, because God the Son is going to be really the central figure of course in this first chapter of Revelation. So grace and peace, he’s saying to the churches to have the kind of grace and peace that we have known in our churches. It must come from God the Father who is, who was, and is to come. Everything that he was, he is now.
And everything he is now, he always will be. We can rely on that. We don’t have to go back 500 years, as I did in the book this week, to find grace and peace in the churches.
And why not? Because God is, he was, and he always will be. And from the seven spirits, a unique description of the Holy Spirit of God, as we saw last week, who is before the throne of God, who represents us there, who translates our prayers, who helps us in our singing, helps us in the understanding of the scripture, the Holy Spirit is there to bring grace and peace to our church services as well. And then to Jesus Christ. And that’s what we have in our text today in verse 5, now mentioned third, though of course we know God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all equal, all God, all manifestations, persons if you will, of the Godhead. And so Jesus Christ is the faithful witness and he is a number of things. But I want you to notice before we come back and pick up those things that right in the middle of verse 5, he also then says unto him, now notice if you see, if you begin in verse 5, from him, from Jesus Christ, and then in the middle of the verse, and unto him, that is, unto Jesus Christ, if grace and peace come from Jesus Christ and the Father and the Spirit, then unto him, and no doubt under the Father and under the Holy Spirit, belong what? Well you have to go to the end of verse 6 to see his final statement, glory and dominion forever and ever. If you see, if grace and peace come to us through the Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, then folks we owe unto God glory and dominion forever and ever. And I think if we forget either of these things, either of these bookends, where our grace and peace come from, and who deserves our praise and honor and worship and glory and dominion, then we will cease to worship as God wants us to worship.
We must remember these things. Now I just flipped back through my Bible a little bit today, thinking of glory, or excuse me, grace and peace. And do you know you can hardly go to one of the epistles in the New Testament? One of the letters, whether John writes it or especially Paul, without finding this introduction, to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Under the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours, grace be unto you and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Second Corinthians, the same thing. Galatians, under the churches of Galatia, grace be to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Go to the next book, Ephesians, grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. Philippians, yes, grace and peace be unto you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And Colossians and 1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians and every book, grace and peace be unto you.
You know what finally went through my thick head? Grace and peace is supposed to be in our churches, folks. As a matter of fact, grace and peace, no doubt, becomes the most common characteristic of the true churches of Jesus Christ. There must be grace and peace in these churches. And then I got to think, you know, here we are in the 21st century, in the day and age in which we live, and I think in our lives, in our country, and no doubt in this world, we are desperate for knowing real grace and real peace.
Isn’t that sad? I think in many ways grace has simply become a license to do what we want to do. We love the song Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound That Saved a Wretch Like Me, because we intend to go on being a wretch and think God is kind of like a big daddy that sits in the sky and just kind of forgets a lot of that and says, oh, go on, I love you anyway.
way. That’s grace to us many times today. And peace, I think, is a psychological manipulation drummed up by cheap doctrine. You know, we’ve kind of talked ourselves into how to manipulate this and think like this and do this and then we’ll have peace and everything will kind of be tranquility and yet we know nothing of the peace that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ and from the Spirit of God into our hearts. We’re in desperate need of knowing grace and peace. But not only that, I think we’re in desperate need of knowing how to ascribe glory and dominion to God.
Knowing how to praise God, how to truly worship Him. Now we know how to perform our own praises, I’m afraid. We know how to do the performing and then say, well now Lord, you sit here while we do the performing and you kind of clap for us.
As long as we have a stage, a platform and the rest we can perform on, we’re happy about it. I think that we’ve created God in our own image and we keep Him kind of under control so that His will and His wishes are exactly what we wanted in the first place anyway. And we’re in desperate times because of that folks. But John has a solution here or Jesus does through John. And that is that we must keep the Lord in His proper place before us so that we can have grace and we can have peace and we can properly ascribe to Him glory and dominion.
You know there’s a formula in the book of Numbers that the Israelites used often in Numbers 6. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and what? Be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Be gracious unto thee and give thee peace because grace and peace come from who?
From the Lord. Grace and peace does not come from within us folks. We’re at war with God usually and even after we’re redeemed the Lord has to work hard on us to change us into the image of His own Son. But grace and peace come from the Lord Himself. Now go back to our text as we work through chapter 5 and let’s think about those two things. We’re told in the third place if you will after verse 4 finishes that grace and peace also come from Jesus Christ.
Or if I said grace and peace mostly from Jesus Christ. I’m not setting one member of the Godhead up above another but he is set third here because for the rest of the chapter we’re going to center on that person of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is His mission to bring us grace right? If it had not been for God manifested in the flesh we would not know grace. It’s not for the Lord Jesus Christ who brought an enemy back to God would we have peace with God?
We saw that last week. And so grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ. A lot comes from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you remember in verse 1? The revelation of Jesus Christ. We wouldn’t be sitting here today with Bibles on our laps and reading the very word of God if it hadn’t come through Jesus Christ. There’s the testimony of Christ in verse 2. The testimony of Jesus Christ, John is holding that. Verse 9 hits not only the testimony of Jesus Christ but also of the word of God. And in verse 9 the patience of the Lord Jesus Christ. These things all come from Christ. But in verse 5 he says this, from Jesus Christ who is?
Now stop and think that passes all understanding that keeps our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Where does it come from? It comes from Jesus Christ and how do we get it then? How does it come our way?
And John takes time to give us a biographical sketch of Jesus Christ. That’s where it comes from. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
So it must come from the Lord Jesus Christ. And too often we already, we have Jesus already figured out, right? We kind of learned about him in Sunday school.
We know A, B and C about him. And so we’ve said him here for the rest of our life like a little statue in our lives. And there Jesus is.
Of course we know him. But Paul in his latest letters in the New Testament after serving him for so many years said, oh that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. He still was not so satisfied with knowing about Christ. And so when John says to us, who is, we need to pay close attention. First of all, he is the faithful witness.
I appreciated Ray’s prayer this morning that highlighted these things for us and thank you for that. The faithful witness, God’s testimony in this world. The one who always did those things that pleased the Father, the one who finished the the redemption for sin and on the cross could say it is finished.
All that you need from God in grace is there in him. The faithful witness, you know that the word witness is martyr, Martus it is here in this verse. He is the faithful witness. Now every witness is in some sort of martyr. That is all of us who witness for the Lord Jesus Christ expect that we might get some reaction back. It doesn’t mean it will always end in death, but it means that there’s always some reaction back against us.
Why? Because if the world did not receive him, he’s not going to receive his witnesses. But he was the faithful witness in that he did everything God asked him to do even to the point of death. I want you to go to Philippians chapter 2 with me if you will. It’s a passage you should know about and so I ask you to turn there and since it’s a little bit long I don’t want to read it all to you, but Philippians chapter 2 we have a passage that we call the Canosus passage because there’s a word in this text.
The Greek word is Canosus and I’ll point it out that tells us a lot about Christ. Now in this second chapter of Philippians, Paul is going to say this, you need to think this way. In the end of verse 2 you need to be of one mind. In verse 3 you need to have lowliness of mind and in verse 4 you need to do it toward others. And so verse 5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now isn’t that what John’s doing for us? John is saying Jesus Christ who is these things? And here’s the apostle Paul saying you let this mind be in you.
Now notice who? Describing again Jesus Christ. Who being in the form of God, the morphae of God, equal to God. Thought it not robbery to be equal with God, meaning simply it wasn’t something he was going to grasp at all costs and say, well I’m not leaving heaven to go to earth. No, even though in all ways he is equal with God he still turned it loose. So in verse 7, but made himself of no reputation. That’s one word in Greek from the word canosis.
That’s why they call this the canosis passage. He made himself of no reputation. The God of all of heaven. The firstborn of every creature as we’re going to see in our text. The one who loved us, the one who has existed throughout eternity, he made himself of no reputation.
How shameful it is for Christians and especially for ministers of the gospel to seek reputation when the Lord Jesus Christ himself made himself of no reputation. Took upon him the form of a servant, the morphae of a servant and was made in likeness of men and being found in fashion. Schematum, the schematic it is being found in fashion as a man, meaning he was God and he was man. He was still fully God. When you looked on him, you saw a man.
If you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t know he was also God. When he walked on this earth, he was in the schematic of a man, fashion as a man, but then notice what he says in verse 8, he humbled himself. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He is and was the faithful witness. He did exactly what God asked him to come here to do, the faithful servant and witness. But if glory and dominion belong to him, why is that verse 9, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father.
You know what? My doctor tells me I have osteoarthritis in my knee, but I think Christians too often have theoarthritis in our knees. We have a hard time bowing our knees to God himself and to the Lord Jesus Christ. When is the last time we got on our knees and praised his name for what he has done for us? And if we have theoarthritis, we must have theotonsolitis too because every tongue should be confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father. And how often does our tongue confess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Maybe we’ve got arthritis of the tongue and yet this is what we have to understand that Jesus Christ did these things, that Jesus Christ went before us. He’s the captain of our salvation, the high priest of our faith. Now back to our text in Revelation 1. He’s not only the faithful witness, he is also the first begotten of the dead. Ray said it right in his prayer when he said the first begotten in his resurrection from the dead. We can say that that he’s the first begotten of the dead, literally out of the dead, because he was the first one to be resurrected, the first and only one. Now that doesn’t mean people weren’t resuscitated when they died and God brought them back to life and then what happened to them later?
They died again. Poor Lazarus had to do it twice. Though it’s appointed unto man once to die, some get to be the exception to that rule. And he had to die twice, but Jesus Christ didn’t because he was resurrected. He was the first begotten of the dead.
Now this is an important word and I want us to dwell on it for just a few minutes. To be the first begotten, sometimes that’s translated first born as you recognize it in our scripture. And the word is prototikos, prototikos, and if you look up in English equivalent to that, it would be primogenitor. A primogenitor is the exclusive right of inheritance to the first born. The firstborn.
Webster will tell you the same thing. There is an exclusive right of inheritance to the oldest son. To the one, to that person belongs a certain preeminence. He’s the primogenitor, the prototikos. And so this word appears nine times in our New Testament.
It’s actually a pretty rare word. And when we read these nine times, we find this, that he is first in time, obviously a firstborn would be first in time. Jesus Christ, of course, was first in time. It means even more than that, first in importance, preeminence. And so the firstborn always has a certain preeminence.
That’s why I always thought that way about my older brother. You know, he had a certain preeminence, us third kids, we don’t. But Jesus Christ, of course, is high above all other things. And then he is first among peers, as we’ll see. And so as I looked at these nine instances of this word, and I’m going over these for the sake of one thing, that the cults always throw up in our face.
And I think it’s worth us noticing here. But first, three times, this means physical birth. In other words, first it is when Jesus was born, Mary brought forth her firstborn son. And so three times in the Scripture, this means simply someone who was born physically who was the first. Jesus was the first, Isaac was the firstborn, and so forth. Four times in the Scripture, it means first among resurrected brethren. It means that in here in our passage, for whom he did for an oh, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of a son that he might be the first born among many brethren. Now you and I will be resurrected one day, but Jesus Christ was resurrected first. He was the first fruits, right?
A kindred type of term. Or Colossians 1.18, he is the head of the body of the church who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. And so he is the first out of the grave, and Hebrews 12.23, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. When we get to heaven, we’ll be the church of the firstborn in heaven.
And to God the judge and the spirits of judgment made perfect. So we are the church of the firstborn, and yet he is the firstborn from the dead. Now there is one that always troubles people, and that’s Colossians 1.15, which says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. And there are always and have been those who say, well then Christ was the first thing created. And then after he was created, he created all things himself. And they always go back to verse 15 to point this out, the firstborn of every creature. Now first we ought to understand that every creature can also be stated all creation. He is the firstborn of all created.
And then listen to this, for by him, I’m still reading in Colossians 1. 16, for by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible or invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things and by him all things consist. Was he before anything was created in this world?
Of course he was. He’s eternal. Of course he was before all things. But does that mean he was created first?
No, not at all. There’s a dictionary I like to read and I have this in my office. It’s 10 volumes on every word in the New Testament. 10 volumes. And rather than reading a little statement about this long, when you read a definition of a word, for example on Prototikos, it has 12 pages of definitions from all the history and all the languages in the Old Testament and the New Testament, you know, and everything like that. And when it gets all done, the greatest thing it said is that Jesus Christ cannot create all things and at the same time himself be created.
Isn’t that right? How can someone say he created all things but he himself is also created? And what does Colossians say he is before all things and by him were all things made? And so to be the firstborn of all creation folks means that he has preeminence and he was there first because he is the everlasting God who was not created but is eternal, God in the flesh. And then the last one is that he has, when he was born into this world, he came in with supreme authority and preeminence, Hebrews 1 6, when he bringeth the first begotten into the world, he saith, let all the angels of God worship him. When Jesus was born, the angels of God worshiped him. And who is this first begotten that God brings into the world? Not the first one ever born by any means, but it means he is the eternal God, the one who has preeminence, the firstborn of the God.
head you might say. So folks when we read this make no mistake about it such terminology speaks to the deity the divinity the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ and he is the first begotten of the dead. He did come out of the grave first so that you and I can come out of the grave also.
Let me summarize that if I can. Jesus Christ the third person of the Godhead existing eternally with God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit was then the preeminent one who would come to this earth to redeem us from our sins. He created all things that exist in this world all the angels all of the creation time and space itself he made it and he was there before it and then he came into this creation as the firstborn from all eternity God placed him here in the very thing that he had made and then while here he became one of us and he became a brother like us that he might be the firstborn among many brethren and he died so that we might have victory over the grave and he became the first born out of the grave so that all of us can have grace from the Lord Jesus Christ and peace forever with him.
What a wonderful thing this is now thirdly I’ll move on. He is also the prince of the kings of the earth that is he is the Archon he is the highest he is the prince of the the archa if you will the highest arch if you will of the Godhead the of the all the kings of the earth Daniel 2.4 47 the king answered unto Daniel and said of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods and a Lord of lords and a revealer of secrets seeing thou could reveal this secret. Revelation 17 and verse 14 these shall make war with the Lamb that’s the Lord Jesus Christ of course and the Lamb shall overcome them for he is Lord of lords and King of kings and they that are with him are called and chosen and faithful and of course in chapter 19 verse 16 when he returns on a white horse from heaven he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written King of kings and Lord of lords. There’s a statement in Psalm 89 that goes like this he shall cry unto me thou art my father my God the rock of my salvation also I will make him my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth. So when we find in our text that he is the prince of the kings of the earth we know exactly what that means. If you will look back to your left just a couple pages to Hebrews chapter one it’ll appear just a few books back Hebrews chapter one let me remind you of something though somebody says well if Jesus is king and the king of kings and Lord of lords why do all the bad things happen and why does all the evil continue in this world look at Hebrews chapter two I’m sorry Hebrews chapter two and verse eight thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet Hebrews 2 8 for in that he put all in subjection under him he left nothing that is not put under him but now we see not yet all things put under him not yet it’s coming resurrection day isn’t here yet Jesus isn’t reigning yet but he will reign but we see Jesus verse 9 who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor and we give that to him today that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man for it became him that is it was right of him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons in the glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering aren’t you glad that he’s going to bring us into glory aren’t you glad that he is going to firstborn among many brethren that he is our older brother and it’s proper to be able to say that because he’s the firstborn of all brethren and he will bring us to glory that’s a great thing he is the prince of the kings of the earth now back to our text and let me quickly finish these last statements because not only grace and peace come from the Lord Jesus Christ but glory and dominion belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and so we have that and we’ll finish it next week in verse 6 but unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood Galatians I was reading in the in this in this book of Galatians if I can find it and I don’t have it so I won’t read it let me go back to Galatians chapter 1 and I read you a few verses to begin with but in verse 3 it says grace be unto you in peace from God the Father from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father to him be glory forever and ever amen did Jesus Christ wash you from your sins if he did folks he delivered you from this present evil world or this present evil age he made you a child of God he made you different from this world he gave you the ability not to sin and live in this world in the muck and mire of its age but he’s delivered you from this from this present evil world and our text says why because he loved us. Romans chapter 5, a great chapter says this in verse 6, when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
I guess it’s just not popular in our day and age is it to talk about ourselves as such a worm as I? As the ungodly, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet per adventure, for a good man someone even dare to die, but God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. What love is that? That is a God they love. Do you know that the world before they know Jesus Christ does not know a God they love? They may quote John 3 16 from here to the day they die, but if they don’t know Christ’s Savior they do not and cannot experience a God they love. And you know what a God they love is basically all giving love. Asking nothing of you in return.
You had nothing to offer God for your salvation. He loved you with an all-giving love. All human love is in some respect give and take.
There may be a lot of give but there’s something I want in return, something I expect in return. That is what human love is whether it’s family love, falling in love type of love or whatever friendships. But God gave us an all-giving love for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Not that we loved him but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. That is a God they love. He loved you and had he not loved you, you individually in such a way you would have no hope of grace or peace.
To him belongs glory and dominion. And not only that he washed you, right? He washed you from your sins. You remember Titus chapter 3, after the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy, that is his grace, he saved us. By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. You know that the human race needs washing folks.
It needs washing and you can’t just wash yourself up a little bit and wipe off your face a little bit. You know I used to take junior kids to camp. You ever take junior kids to camp? Spend a week in a dusty camp with junior boys who never opened their suitcase.
Whatever they came to camp in they leave in and you say go take a shower and they come back and there’s this kind of white wash look around their face like this as their dusty hair is pushed to the side. You know that’s what the world is like. We’re like a bunch of junior high kids thinking we’ve washed up before God and we haven’t. He needs to wash us and how is he going to wash us from our sins by the way. You know in Ephesians 1-5 that we are told that we were by nature the children of wrath. By our nature we’re children of the wrath of God. We deserve the wrath of God for our dirtiness and our filthiness and the sins that offend a holy God. But he washed us from our sins and how? In his own blood. In whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins according to the God. Sometimes we’re far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
How does that happen? You know I guess that’s a hard thing for people to understand isn’t it? Because all kinds of theories have popped up in the last 2,000 years as to how we can be washed by the blood of Christ. Some believe that priests can take wine and buy a certain pronouncement turn it into the blood of Christ and if you drink it or he drinks it then you’ll be washed or something like that.
Or some people I don’t know come up with some type of a fountain of youth that if you take of it you’ll be cleansed. How is it that he washed us by his blood? Well if you want to read to me one of the the greatest descriptions it’s in that famous chapter Isaiah 53 where in that Old Testament prophecy we are given this suffering Messiah who died for us and I’ll read you a couple verses there Isaiah 53 10 it pleas the Lord to bruise him he has put him to grief but when thou shalt make his soul which he poured out on the cross and offering for sin he that is God will see his seed he’ll seek Jesus Christ in that and shall prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand he shall see the travail of his soul when by faith you come to the Lord Jesus Christ and say I need to be washed of my sins God sees the travail of the soul of Jesus Christ on the cross pouring out his blood for you he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied for by his knowledge shall the righteous servant justify many for he shall bear their iniquities you come to Jesus Christ by faith then God sees Jesus Christ and he sees the blood he shed not your righteousness not your blood you could give yourself as a martyr and shed all of your blood it wouldn’t go a second any turn life for you.
He sees His blood and He sees that soul poured out and He applies that righteousness to your sinfulness and makes you a child of God washed by His blood. I love that Revelation chapter 5 where John is weeping and John is weeping in Revelation 5 because he sees God on the throne who has the book of life if you will a seven sealed book who is going to reveal how to have eternal life and no one in heaven, no one on earth and no one under the earth is worthy to go and open that book and John cries in heaven and when he’s crying one of the elders said, weep not behold the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David hath prevailed that is he died for you to open the book to loose the seven seals thereof and I beheld and lo in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb as it had been slain, freshly slain for you and me. John sees that before the throne of God a lamb of God as it had been slain and so he came the lamb did and he took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.
I mean you approach God and you take something out of God’s hand I don’t care if you are Michael the archangel you will die on the spot and this lamb slain before the foundation of the world comes and takes the book out of his hand this of him that sat on the throne and when he had taken the book the four beasts and the four and twenty elders you might think are going to attack this person no they fall down before the lamb and every one of them had harps and golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints and they sung a new song and said, To the lamb now thou art worthy you are worthy too you must be God also you must be sinless and perfect and eternally holy you also can take this book out of the father’s hand you are worthy to take the book to open the seals for thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation and has made us unto our God’s kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. Which is next week’s message in verse 6 praise the Lord for that.
I love that old song, Redeemed. You ever you know that song redeemed how I love to proclaim it redeemed you know if you redeem something my wife and I went to an antique store well she went and I went along but I find a few things too but you know what you redeem things out of antique stores you you salvage them you know you rescue them and wash them up and make them usable again you redeem them redeemed how I love to proclaim it redeemed by the blood of the lamb redeemed through his infinite what mercy his grace all giving love to us his child and forever. I am the peace of God that passes all understanding keeping our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. What a wonderful blessing this is.
Now I want to ask you if you know him as your savior you ever come to him and said, I am a sinner lost and undone I need my sins to be under the blood of Christ. I need no longer to be seen as a sinner before God but rather as a redeemed. One as a brother of Christ if you’ve never received Jesus Christ as your savior, as we sing an invitation song you have an opportunity to come here meet me at the front let someone show you from the scripture how to receive Christ as your savior. That’s always our first and foremost invitation and then you may also as a child of God if you need kneel here at the front and pour your heart out to the Lord. Burn some bridges behind you put some things away that you know are displeasing to God and leave this building today walking anew in fresh fellowship with him. Or maybe you didn’t need some other need taking care of your life maybe you need to bow your head before you sing a word of a song and say, oh Lord you know what is holding me back forgive me of this whatever it is you do it before the Lord stand with me. If you will and let’s quickly bow our heads before we open our songbook today let’s let’s pray.
Father, now in our invitation time we invite you to speak to our hearts and Father if we have come before you in humbleness and contrite us today if we have opened your word with reverence. If we have spoken of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Godhead in the way that we should then Father our prayer is that your Spirit would work in our hearts that you would do your work that you desire to do, that you would move each and every one of us in the way that we need to be moved. Show us what is displeasing to you. and Father I pray that the Holy Spirit would be mighty and strong in pulling a sinner to Jesus Christ as Savior. And so Father do these things in our midst and honor your word we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
A familiar song is page 332 in our book just as I am we’re going to sing four verses of this if you have a need come as we sing meet me at the front you do what God wants you to do just as I am 332 let’s sing it together just as I am 332 let’s sing it togethe
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