Happily Ever After-The Last Blessing
CCCAG, July 14th, 2024
Scripture: Revelation 22:10-16
Introduction
Today we finish out our series on the blessings found in the book of Revelation. We will cover the final two blessings, focusing a bit more on the last blessing.
The reason we are only briefly going to touch on the 6th blessing it’s very similar to the first blessing found in Rev 1:3.
Let’s quickly take a look at it and then get into the 7th blessing.
Rev 22:6-7 Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” (7) “Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”
These verses, repeated from Revelation 1:3 form the basis of the 7 blessings found in this book.
They tell us that
Jesus is faithful and true.
Jesus is the LORD of the prophets
And then, This scripture also tells us something very important-
Blessed are those who keep the words of this prophecy.
I want to focus for a moment on that word “keep” in the Greek language.
The Word is “tereo” (Tay-reh’-o) which has a duel meaning. It means to guard something, and to protect.
It’s second meaning refers to the most defended part of a fortress- the part that is supposed to be impossible for an enemy to ever conquer.
What two things mean for us in this time we are living in right now-
We as Christians are to guard these truths, and make them the most defended parts of our hearts, minds, and spirits.
Because if we don’t- we end up losing everything.
You’ll notice that the denominations that are collapsing the fastest in our world right now started their slide toward being irrelevant because they rejected the truth of the book of Revelation.
These denominations started their slow slide away from God by saying that Revelations is just “It’s a allegory, not meant to be taken literally”
they started doubting God’s prophetic Word, and in doing so, denied the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of their church’s.
Remember this- the early church fathers unanimously chose the book of Revelation to be part of the canon the bible. That means that the Holy Spirit directed them to recognize these writings as the theonuestros- the God breathed accepted writings of the bible.
We are to keep the words written in Revelation, for they tell us what will soon take place.
But that is not the primary purpose of this book. We often look to it as its the roadmap of the end times- and it does also serve that purpose, but it’s the second purpose of the book.
The first purpose is seen in Rev 1:1
Rev 1:1 says The revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave Him to show HIS servants what must soon take place
The purpose of this book is to reveal Jesus Christ as the soon coming King, and then serve as a roadmap to get us there is a secondary benefit of this book.
In fact it’s the reason the entire bible exists- to reveal Jesus to the world.
You and I are charged by God to share that purpose-to reveal Jesus to the world through our love for HIM and the sharing of THE WORD.
That’s the blessing of those who keep the words of this book.
I could say amen at this point as a major bible point has been preached, but we have one more blessing to cover.
The 7th and final blessing found in the book of Revelation is found in chapter 22 if you want to follow along with us this morning. We will start in verse 10.
Scripture
Rev 22:10-16 Then he (Jesus) said to me, “Don’t seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near. (11) Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness; let the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous go on in righteousness; let the holy still be holy.” (12) “Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work. (13) I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (14) “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. (15) Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (16) “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the Root and descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
Prayer
There is a lot to unpack here
We will start with these other exhortations that appear right before the blessing
I. The first thing we saw is that the bible tells us “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book”
The fact we are told NOT to seal it is very profound.
The reason is that a very close companion to the book of Revelation is the Old Testament book of Daniel. You need both of these books together to properly interpret the other, and to understand the timeline of the events still to come.
When you read the book of Daniel, the prophet is told a few times to seal up the words that he has seen and heard, and not only to do that, but to make sure he writes down that he is sealing up something. God again does this in Revelation chapter 10.
It always struck me as odd that God does this- tells the Prophet Daniel and the Apostle John a secret, lets us know that they have been told a secret and then says, “You don’t get to know our secret”
Why is God doing this? Why does this matter for us?
What can we learn from God telling the bible writers to seal things?
There is a theological term called progressive revelation. It’s the idea that God only gives us as much truth as we can handle at any given point.
I was meditating on this thought as I was preparing this message
I was thinking that if God had visited me right after I made the decision to follow Jesus in 1993 and shown me HIS plan and what I had to go through to get to 2024, I would have ran screaming out of the church and never returned.
In my infant Christian maturity, I was not ready to see and understand God’s plan for me, and what it would take to get me there.
Many of those experience were quite painful and I went to some very dark places. However, all of it was necessary to form a foundation to get to where I am today.
This is why God only gives us pieces of His plan at a time. Our Father tells us what we need to know, when we need to know it, and tells us to trust HIM with the rest.
That’s why God sometimes tells the bible writers to seal up what they hear.
This is really shown to us in the bible account of Joseph. God gives Joseph, a very young man at the time, a vision of his brothers and even father someday honoring him and even bowing before him.
Does Joseph seal up that vision?
Nope, he tells everyone about it.
Keep in mind, he was the second youngest child at that time- and birth order was huge in that culture. A child in Joseph’s position had no voice- he was the 11th runner up in the hierarchy of that family.
That is why his brothers got so angry with him announcing that someday they would all bow down to him. It got so bad that they eventually plan to kill him over it, but instead sold him into slavery.
The take away for us is this-
Sometimes when God reveals something for you- keep it to yourself.
It’s for you, and you alone. Other people will not be able to accept, handle, or even process that truth. They haven’t been prepared for that level yet.
Jesus illustrated this idea for us when He said you don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.
Let me explain the reference.
In bible times when they used wineskins to hold wine for personal use or for traveling. But they could only use those wineskins once.
The reason is because the wine would continue to ferment in the wineskin, and the fermentation gasses would stretch the leather. So, once the wineskin was emptied, it was thrown away as it can’t hold more wine as it’s been stretched to it’s breaking point and any new wine would just be wasted when it burst and spilled onto the ground.
That’s a great word picture for a person living in 1st century Israel, but for us, not so much. A more modern way of seeing what God is teaching us in HIS word-
A basic example for us- you don’t teach algebra to a 4 year old. They need the foundation of basic arithmetic before you start learning the more advanced math. If you try to teach them algebra all of that learning will fall to the ground as they don’t have a foundation to hold that learning.
The same is true for us
Some things are just too wonderful OR too dreadful for us to handle as younger Christians. Our spiritual capacity has already been stretched, and needs to be renewed before it can handle more- just like the wineskin.
Sometimes God has to let life, experience, and spiritual growth happen, and use all of that to form the image of his Son in you to get you to the point of being able to hold and walk in His revelations, dreams, and provisions HE will provide for your life.
A second lesson is this-
Sometimes the secrets of God are for you, and you alone and not for the masses.
Be very careful who you share them with, because often that person is at different level of maturity than you, and may not be able to accept it.
We will leave that right there
Circling back to the scripture at hand-In Daniel’s case, whatever he was told to seal up could have hindered what Jesus was going to do a few centuries later. People already had the wrong idea of what HE was there to do.
The people of Jesus’ day only understood the Messiah to be a conquering King. Jesus is definitely the KING, but something else needed to happen first. Jesus needed to deal with sin and it’s consequences, otherwise he would be king of an empty kingdom because everyone would be in hell.
The foundation of Jesus being savior is what supports HIS right to be our king. Savior had to come first, then the Kingship.
That’s why I believe that God told Daniel to seal that vision that he saw, because the foundation for that had not been laid yet.
Now that Jesus is Savior, we can prepare for HIS Kingdom which is both here and not yet. Our duty and God ordained task right now for us to live and proclaim Christ is coming soon.
So don’t seal up the words of prophecy in this book. HE is coming soon. People need to hear that, even if most of them scoff and make fun of you.
Don’t seal up this prophecy.
The second point-the bible has some interesting instruction for us-
II. (11) Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness; let the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous go on in righteousness; let the holy still be holy.” (12) “Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work.
These verses seem very awkward. Why would Jesus seem almost flippant when HE is talking about people just continuing in ways that will lead them to hell?
It seems contradictory to the rest of the bible message that Christians should affect and infect their culture with the Gospel message.
In the church, sometimes we lose focus on what really matters.
We need to understand-
Jesus did not come to make bad people good.
Jesus came to make dead people live.
In the church we have focused way too much on controlling behavior and not enough in getting a person to where they need to be in relationship with Jesus.
That’s the entire mission of the church- make disciples first, then teach them to obey.
In other words- get them in relationship with Jesus, and let HIM clean them up.
This really should be something that’s front and center in our minds right now as we are in an election season, and the people running for office are constantly saying saying they will pass this law, or change that law so that people act the way that we think they should.
Christians have been guilty in the past for supporting organizations like the moral majority which focused on passing laws to govern human behavior toward what the bible says, thinking that legislating how people, dead in their sins act, would somehow create a utopia.
News flash- humanity already tried that. 4000 years of biblical history- the entire Old Testament already tried that. It failed miserably.
We are not saved by what we do or not do.
We are saved only through what Jesus Christ has done for us.
On Christ the solid rock I stand
ALL other ground is shifting sand.
If we focus on anything other than allowing Jesus to reign and rule in the hearts of HIS people, then we fall into the trap of the enemy.
Works are important- they show the proof of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, but they are not the metric to determine salvation.
If our works do not come from a spiritual source that starts with the worship of Jesus, then anything produced by those works will be shifting sand, and will not hold up at the judgment.
We need to allow the Holy Spirit to kill off the old you so that you are born again into the person Jesus wants you to be.
So you wear HIS robes, washed in the blood, made beautiful, clean, and white indicating we stand before God as one of the redeemed.
Finally, we have this assurance-
13) (Jesus says) I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (14) “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.
And here, the bible completes the plan of salvation. The bible has taken us back to where we were in the beginning.
The brokenness that occurred in Genesis 3 is now restored in Revelation 22.
That’s why Jesus is stating who He is- The Alpha and Omega- those are the first and last letters of the Greek Alphabet. In other words, Jesus is the A-Z, the first and the last.
The sin started in Genesis 3 has now been dealt with
The nakedness clothed
Humanity redeemed, and worshiping Jesus forever as we live in his presence forever.
Altar call/prayer
