Archive for the ‘Revelation’ Category
What Does the Book of Revelation Say to the Church Today?
I’m almost half way through the book of Revelation. And in my 21 years at Harvest Bible Chapel, I have never taught through this book before. I have to tell you, I am deeply impacted by this study.
What does this book written by John almost 2,000 years ago have to say to the church today? Take a look.
Jesus Will Return
I am leading my church family through the New Testament book of Revelation this year called “The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Learning to Hope in the King and the Kingdom.” We started last fall and we’re going verse by verse, week by week through this final book in the book God wrote. Now that we are really into it, I see that the timing of this study could not be more perfect in light of the current events of our day.
Yesterday, I preached on Revelation 7: 1-17. And to set it up, we looked at the four most commonly held views about the Rapture of the church:
• Pre-Tribulation Rapture
• Mid-Tribulation Rapture
• Post-Tribulation Rapture
• Pre-Wrath Rapture
Please take a moment to read Matthew 24:29-31 and compare it Revelation 6:12-17. Wow!
I have friends that are students of God’s Word and followers of Jesus Christ, who hold to each of the views listed above. And scholars have debated for years over who is right and who is wrong. It is an issue that we will not solve on this side of the Rapture.
But listen, Loved Ones, what I want us to get right is that Jesus will return! I am not as concerned about when the moment will be as I am about the fact that the moment is coming. I want to encourage you to get off the “Planning” Committee and get on the “Welcoming” Committee.
Are you ready for Jesus’ return?
Here’s a chart of the End Times that I am going through with the church family at Harvest. I trust it will be helpful to you in your personal study of the book of Revelation. And if you want to hear the whole message, “The Rapture Question,” follow this link to the Harvest Bible Chapel Web site.
Parenting and the Tribulation
As many of you know, James has been teaching through the book of Revelation. Last weekend I had a conversation with a young father who was thinking through some of the implications of the sermon series, specifically as it relates to parenting children amidst the threat of persecution. Along similar lines, I received the following e-mail question from K and J. I post their question and my response here in hopes that it might be of help to some of you.
“How do we prepare our children for these end times, these “perilous times”? (If and how to present these passages to our children.) Our kids are ages five and seven. We want them to trust in God and not be fearful.”
Dear K and J,
You ask a great question. My own children are seven, four, and one, so I feel the weight of it myself.
We here in America think about this issue as a future contingency. But in many respects, your question speaks to a present reality for many believers in other parts of the world. Places like China, the Sudan, and in certain parts of India, etc., can all be hostile to the faith, and Christian parents in these countries have to wrestle with this question as living reality. I’m certain I don’t have the final answer, but here are a few thoughts…
The world is full of dark realities that children were never meant to grapple with. Part of our job as parents is to shield our children from such things — to protect their innocence for as long as possible. So I’m not at all certain it’s necessary to burden our young children with the horrors of the persecutions of the last day, any more than it is necessary to burden our children with the horrors of the present day. I don’t constantly talk to my children about how I or they could die from cancer, or how our house could burn down. It’s simply not a burden they need to carry, and there is nothing they can do to prevent such things. Worry about today, Jesus tells us, for tomorrow has enough troubles of its own. Some bridges need only be crossed when we get there.
Should a day of persecution dawn upon the American church, as it has already dawned upon the Church around the world, there will be no easy answers. Things will be gut-wrenching hard. And in such times we can only do what Christians have always done when faced with persecution: trust in the sovereign, benevolent God who has promised good to us in Christ.
So if our children ask us questions along these lines, I think we must answer them with a calm statement about what the Bible teaches — according to their level of understanding and maturity. And we must answer such questions with confidence, and a full assurance of hope in what has been promised — that God keeps his own, that our present suffering cannot compare with the eternal weight of glory, and that even in death there is an ultimate hope.
Ultimately, I think that the best way to prepare our children for suffering and persecution is to prepare ourselves for suffering and persecution. Anxiety in our faces will produce anxiety in theirs. Peace in our hearts will produce peace in theirs. Some of us perhaps, are worrying about our children when we should be worrying about ourselves.
May God give us grace in that day,
Gerald
Expository Preaching Is Not for the Faint of Heart.
When you are committed to teaching through the text verse by verse it raises some tensions that might be good to discuss. (I am currently underway on our 2009-2010 journey through the book of Revelation)
1) How do you make repetition interesting and engaging? Revelation 6-16 is filled with images of the judgment and justice of God (same as when I was going through Hebrews 7-10, which is filled with OT temple and high priest imagery). How do you talk about every verse and word in depth and not get incredibly repetitive? Repetitiveness is a big issue in expository preaching.
2) Do you need to handle everything sequentially or can you group sections by topic? For example this week I begin the seven churches. Do I group the good churches, the bad churches and the mixed churches, out of sequence. Do I follow the geographical sequence the text does? Do I have to do that? Could I group all the commendations and then all the rebukes? Is that ignoring or disrespecting the obvious sequence the Holy Spirit inspired, or is there no significance to the order other than the geographical order looping through Asian Minor? Topical versus inspired order is a big issue in expository preaching.
3) Why do so many commentaries seem to need to report significance beyond the obvious understanding gained by knowing what the text actually says? For example when John reports seeing that Jesus’ “head and hair were white as wool, as white as snow,” so may commentaries say this is a picture of purity? I beg your pardon, but he didn’t tell us that so we could draw some cheesy connection to a (albeit legitimate) characteristic of Christ. He told us that because that is WHAT HE SAW! Maybe because Christ is awesome and imposing in his appearance, nothing more. In the same part of Revelation 1, John hears that ‘his voice is like the sound of many waters.’ I am just staggered by the number of respected commentaries that go on at length to say how this is a picture of his voice being this or that, duh? HIS VOICE IS LOUD, like mine would be if we could talk in person and you could hear my frustration at people making the text say more than it says, and thereby making it into a puzzle that ordinary people can’t understand. I totally hate when people, pastors, do that to the Bible. Clarity versus needless complexity is a big issue in expository preaching.
4) How much text is too much to cover in one weekend? How much depth do you go into? Martin Lloyd Jones spent years in Ephesians, and his six volume commentary is nothing more than an endless list of word studies. But other commentaries race through the same content a week per chapter and really don’t even touch on the significance of each phrase and verse. Pace is a big issue in expository preaching.
Ok, what do you think?
